


Cheating at Pai Sho

by MuffinLance



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Aang is totally just an airbender honest, Avatar what Avatar, Everyone else gets a buddy fic, Gen, If a turtleduck was really angry and on fire, Just an average day in Zuko's banished life, Season One Toph is EVEN BETTER, Season One Zuko is Best Zuko, Sokka is living in the horror genre, The cat has tentacles, Zuko has a cat, Zuko is an Awkward Turtleduck
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-15
Updated: 2019-10-21
Packaged: 2020-05-13 14:05:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 34,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19252699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MuffinLance/pseuds/MuffinLance
Summary: "You said you were the Avatar!" "...I lied?" Aang doesn't get rescued from Zuko's ship, and no one's seen him go glowy yet... so he starts bluffing. Hard. Or: "The Avatar joins Zuko's quest to find the Avatar." In which Zuko doesn't join the Gaang, the Gaang joins Zuko.





	1. In Which the Avatar Infests Zuko's Roof

"What was it that kid said? Yee-haw? Hup-hup? Wah-hoo? Uh… Yip-yip?"

 

The bison gave a mighty groan… and splashed into the water.

 

Sokka leaned back, both _completely vindicated_ and _disappointed in a corner of his soul he hadn't known existed._ "...I knew it couldn't fly."

 

"Maybe he's still tired?" his dear sweet sister, ever the optimist, was looking as disappointed as he felt. "It's still faster than a canoe, at least."

 

But not as fast as a Fire Navy ship. They watched their target disappear over the horizon ahead.

 

The bison kept swimming.

 

* * *

 

_Two Days Later_

 

The Avatar was on the roof of the lookout tower. The Avatar was on the roof of the lookout tower, and he _wouldn't come down._

 

Zuko kept going through the motions of the Tiger-Crane form, and did his best to ignore Uncle. He'd had three years of practice.

 

Uncle did his best to not be ignored. He _also_ had three years of practice.

 

"Prince Zuko, I cannot help but feel you are distracted from your training. Perhaps a break—"

 

"I don't need a break! I need the Avatar to _not be on the roof of the lookout tower!"_

 

"Breath control, Prince Zuko," Uncle scolded. His eyes trailed upwards. "And he _is_ still captured. Technically."

 

"Only until we get in sight of land! Or… or until he starves up there!" Zuko transitioned from _hawk-crane takes minnow-wasp_ to _gesticulating wildly._ Though not a traditional firebending form, it still involved rather a lot of flames. "I can't bring my father a dead Avatar, he'd just send me out for the new one!"

 

"Don't worry, he won't starve. I have made sure the crew is leaving food out for him. He has been surprisingly polite in his gratitude, if a bit _distant."_ Uncle chuckled.

 

" _Stop doing that!_ No, not the _chuckling,_ the leaving food! How are we ever going to get him down if he has everything he needs up there?"

 

Uncle stroked his beard. This was always a sign that Zuko wouldn't like whatever he said next. "Perhaps you could talk him down?"

 

It was a ridiculous idea, and Zuko gave Uncle a scowl for even suggesting it.

 

"Zuko." And there was Uncle's _serious_ voice. Which meant Zuko was going to like whatever _this_ was even less. "I cannot help but notice that your Avatar has only demonstrated one form of bending in his escape attempts."

 

"He's clearly conserving his strength, Uncle. We're in the middle of the ocean."

 

"A clever strategy." He was stroking his beard. _Again._ "Would it not, perhaps, have been even _more_ clever to have used waterbending? He could have easily escaped us back in the icepack."

 

"He's trying to get us to let down our guard! By… by pretending _not_ to be the Avatar! He already has his air master tattoos, so _he_ knows _we_ know he's an airbender. Any other bending form would give him away."

 

" _Very_ clever, yes. So clever, in fact, that I wonder how you will demonstrate to your father that this is, indeed, the Avatar. All he must do is stick to his strategy, and those at court may confuse him for a simple airbender. An exceptional rarity to be sure, perhaps one of a kind, but not what is in the terms of your return."

 

"Then we'll make him angry. He's young; if we provoke him enough, we should be able to induce the Avatar state."

 

"Hmm. So your plan is to make the Avatar reveal its full powers in a fit of rage. Aboard our small ship first, of course, because we must test your theory. And later, in the middle of the Fire Nation. Perhaps in your father's throne room?"

 

Zuko really, really didn't want to hear this. "Uncle."

 

"I wonder how you will do this. It must be with some trigger you can control; something that we can expect to consistently work, both when we test it and when we demonstrate in the Fire Lord's court..."

 

"...Uncle."

 

"Perhaps you should talk to him after all, nephew!"

 

" _Uncle!"_

 

* * *

 

Aang was trapped on a roof. It… wasn't so bad. It wasn't so _good,_ but… it could be worse? They could be _starving_ him. Or throwing fireballs again; they'd done that a _lot_ the first day. But there was this really good spot in the middle of the roof where if he just sat down and tucked his knees up to his chest, they couldn't hit him at all, and…

 

...And he missed Appa. And Monk Gyatso. And his new Water Tribes friends. Well, friend. Katara had been so nice (and pretty) and _nice,_ and it would have been really fun to go all the way to the North Pole together—they could have visited Kyoshi and Whale Tail and everywhere! But her brother was kind of mean. And Gran-Gran's stares had been _intense,_ like she knew exactly what he was thinking everytime he looked at Katara and maybe-blushed-a-little. And the rest of the Tribe… well, they'd kicked him out. Not that there'd been many of them to do the kicking.

 

Since when was the Southern Water Tribe so _small?_ It was summer, so maybe the men were all out hunting. And most of the women had gone with. And most of the children too, couldn't leave them behind. They'd just left a few people to tend camp, and that's where Aang had ended up.

 

It… couldn't _really_ have been a hundred years, could it?

 

Aang sat in the middle of the roof. And tucked his knees to his chest. And didn't get hit by any fireballs, not that anyone was throwing them right now.

 

His stomach growled.

 

"Avatar?"

 

Aang scrunched up _as small as possible._ That voice-that-sounded-like-it-had-yelled-until-it-tore was really distinctive. And also the most likely person on board to do the fireballing. Even when Prince Zuko was just practicing on deck—which he did a _lot,_ wow, didn't he have anything _better_ to do?—it seemed like all of his stray fire came _straight towards Aang._

 

"I know you're up there, Avatar. Obviously. Or you wouldn't be _on the roof of my lookout tower."_

 

He, ah… he didn't sound any happier about that today than he had yesterday, or the day before. He sounded like he was standing on the walkway below, in front of the windows to the bridge. Which was already _way too close_ for Aang's comfort.

 

"Look, I brought you food."

 

Aang did not look. "Thank you, Prince Zuko. Uh, you can just leave it there. I'll get it later."

 

"Or you could come get it now."

 

"Or I could get it later."

 

"Or… Avatar, you cannot _live_ on top of my _lookout tower."_ He had a way of saying it, like this particular location was somehow _super offensive,_ and anywhere else on deck would have been better. Since he could fireball Aang from anywhere else, maybe he _did_ think that.

 

"Why not? The view is pretty great," Aang said.

 

"You—!"

 

Wow, Aang could actually _hear_ him doing meditative breaths.

 

And then he couldn't hear him.

 

And then he heard a soft _thud,_ and when he turned _Zuko was on the roof, how did he even climb up here so fast, was he part ninja?_

 

Aang leapt to his feet and held his hands up and felt the winds around him. The ship had been skirting the edge of a storm since morning, and the winds _wanted_ to move, _wanted_ to push and shove and rage. The smell of rain on the wind and the cold lashes of air over his bare arms were familiar, too familiar, even though _that_ storm was a hundred years ago. Opposite him, the fire prince shifted into a battle stance. It was kind of ruined by the plate of food in his hand. For a second he looked… really baffled to still be holding it. Aang sort of felt the same. Also Zuko wasn't wearing his armor, which was… strange? He looked like an actual human being instead of a tireless fireball launcher.

 

"Thanks for carrying it up," Aang said. "You can just leave it there."

 

It was hard to read Zuko's expression. Which—kind of made Aang feel _bad,_ because it wasn't Zuko's fault that half his face was burned into a scowl. But the perma-angry-look was always there and always on, so it was hard _not_ to be a little scared of him, especially when it matched the rest of his personality so well. Maybe if the other half had been _smiling_ it would have evened out, but right now it was just… _neutral._ And neutral + scowl = _still really unhappy looking._

 

"If you blow me off this roof, Avatar, I'll…" he didn't finish that sentence. Since it would have ended with 'die horribly', Aang couldn't really blame him. "Look. I'm going to… hand you the food. And we're going to talk. Because you _can't live on the roof of my lookout tower."_ He was really stuck on that point. "You have my word that I will not attack you while we… parley."

 

"That's a really fancy word for 'talk on the roof of your lookout tower.' "

 

The prince let out a breath through his nose and _it was on fire._ But he didn't attack.

 

Aang's stomach grumbled again. He took the plate. And then he sat in one corner of the roof and the prince sort of paced on the other side, while Aang shoveled food in his mouth and made sure to track him with his eyes and only blink when he _really had to._ The prince had said they were going to talk, but he wasn't really doing a lot of talking. Aang got them started.

 

"Are you vegetarians?"

 

"What? _No."_

 

"Then why have all my meals been?"

 

"Because you're an _air nomad._ ...Aren't you?"

 

"Yeah. Umm. But I thought no one had seen an air nomad in a hundred years?"

 

"I've studied your people, Avatar. I've been hunting you for _three years."_

 

"Wow. That's… awhile. How old are you?"

 

"That's _none of your concern._ You just… you can't—"

 

"Live on the roof of your lookout tower?" Aang guessed.

 

Zuko slashed his hands down and they were _very on fire,_ and whatever conversation he'd had going in his head wasn't the same one Aang had been having. "Can you even _use_ the other elements?"  

 

"No. Umm. Why did you think I could, anyway?"

 

"Because you said you were the Avatar!"

 

"You were shouting about the Avatar before I said that, though. Before I was even in the village."

 

"I _saw_ the light. Don't play dumb."

 

Aang suddenly saw the opportunity to play dumb. "You mean the flares from the ship? Yeah. That was… oops. We didn't think the booby traps would still be active."

 

"The other light! The one before that."

 

"Oh," Aang said, drawing the sound out. "You mean the spirit thing."

 

"The spirit thing," Zuko repeated flatly. His hands hung at his sides. And weren't on fire, for once.

 

"Yeah. It, uh… are we _really_ in the South Pole? Because I was _close_ to here, but then the spirit thing happened, and… I kind of showed up?"

 

"Because of a spirit thing." The fire prince _really_ got hung up on things, sometimes.

 

Aang nodded sagely. "Airbenders are very closely connected to the spirit world. Spirit things happen. You must have learned all about it in your studies, right?"

 

"Where were you before that?"

 

"With the monks! But I—" ran away "—got separated from them."

 

"The monks. Where are _they?"_

 

"They're—" At the Southern Air Temple. But he couldn't _tell_ Zuko that, if the world was really at war than maybe the Fire Nation would do something _awful_ to them. "—uh, I'm not going to tell you?"

 

Zuko's shoulders slumped. It made him look about a million times more approachable, like the difference between a big raging tigerdillo and a sharp-toothed tigerdillo-kitten. "...Are you even the Avatar?"

 

Aang looked directly into his eyes, and smiled the same way he did when Gyatso asked who'd eaten the last pie. "No. No, I'm not."

 

For a second the prince just kind of stood there like a _kicked_ tigerdillo-kitten. Then he started pacing again, and wow how was he _not_ burning his sleeves with all that fire? "Why would you _lie_ about that?"

 

"Why would _you_ assume I was?"

 

"Because… ugh!" He sat down on the ledge of the tower. "So you lied about that, and you lied about the terms of your surrender. Anything else?"

 

Aang set his bowl down. He hadn't really finished but he didn't really want to. "I don't like lying. But I _had_ to." He still had to. "You were going to hurt someone if I didn't say I was."

 

"I wasn't going to—" the prince took in a deep deep breath and let it out, and Aang saw steam rising above him. "I wasn't going to hurt anyone."

 

"Uh. You could have fooled me."

 

"That was the _point._ If people are scared enough, they don't fight, and then I _don't have to hurt anyone."_ He sounded a lot like a teenager just then. An almost-normal teenager. Which was maybe why Aang said what he did next.  


"Wow. So you're a vegetarian _and_ a pacifist. We have so much in common!"

 

The fire prince dropped his head in his hands. "Shut up, airbender."

 

 _Airbender_ was a big improvement over _Avatar._

 

"My name is Aang."

 

And he could not _believe_ this was working.

 

* * *

 

Zuko couldn't believe this. No, he _could._ That was the problem. No—the _problem_ was that he'd ever believed a _twelve-year-old_ could be the Avatar. He'd embarrassed himself in front of his crew and his uncle, and by the end of the month somehow the entire fleet would know because they _always did,_ every time he thought he had a lead and it didn't turn out, and Uncle said he couldn't confiscate the men's letters but sometimes it was really tempting to just have a _training accident_ on mail day.

 

"I knew you weren't him." He shouldn't have said that out loud, but he did anyway. Not that it mattered.

 

"You did?" the airbender sounded startled. Like he'd thought he was a _believable_ Avatar, like anyone besides the Banished Prince would have ever made this mistake.

 

"You're too young, and you barely put up a fight, and what kind of Avatar just _surrenders to the Fire Nation?_ Some beacon of hope you would be."

 

"...Yeah. Yeah, I guess I'd be… pretty bad at it. Umm. Sorry to get your hopes up."

 

"I _didn't_ have my hopes up!"

 

"Sorry to make you angry?"

 

"I'm not angry!"

 

"Sorry you shout so much when you're not angry?" The stupid airbender was _smiling,_ like he wasn't still trapped on a ship with the people who'd genocided his own. Though apparently Sozin hadn't been as thorough as he'd thought, if there was a whole enclave of monks and initiates hiding somewhere around here (and there _had_ to be nuns, Zuko knew where little airbenders came from).

 

"I don't—" Zuko pinched the bridge of his nose. "Will you get down from here now?"

 

The boy froze. He was still smiling, but he didn't look so good under it. "...Are you going to try to lock me up again?"

 

It was… a valid question. And Zuko didn't really like the answer, even as he said it. "The only spare beds are in the holding cells."

 

The boy waved his hands in a _no thank you,_ and there was a burst of wind. Not really focused. Just… a burst. "I think I'm fine up here. Airbenders _like_ being out in the elements. And not in small metal cells with big locks."

"Airbender. You _can't_ live up here. Don't make me starve you down." Zuko was trying to be reasonable, but he… knew how he sounded when he was reasonable. The monk-in-training looked _terrified._ So Zuko had gone from _having the Avatar_ to _scaring small children_ in the space of a conversation. This was… this was great. This was definitely how he'd expected his South Pole trip to go. "I could… uh. I could leave the door unlocked. _If_ I have your word of honor that you will obey my orders as the commander of this vessel. And Lieutenant Jee's as captain. In fact, everyone here outranks you, you have to listen to _all_ of them." He thought for a moment. "...Except Uncle."

 

No one should be ordered to play pai sho. No one.

 

The kid had a really good skeptical face. "How do I know you'll _really_ leave it unlocked?"

 

"Because you'll have _my word,_ airbender. Though if you break _yours_ again, I'll lock you in for real. You are still my prisoner, is that clear? But I will allow you honorable parole if you give your _word_ that you will remain on the ship. And behave. And _not live on the roof of my lookout tower."_

 

He was going to regret this. One look at the airbender's suddenly renewed grin, and he _already_ regretted it. And the crew was going to think he was soft, and Uncle was going to smile that patronizing _you didn't kick a puppy-kitten today, nephew, I'm so proud of you_ smile, and the little monk was probably going to sabotage the ship and leave them adrift on the polar seas or maybe just snuff their breath while they slept, because how _else_ had an enclave of airbenders remained secret for a _hundred years—_

 

But at least he wasn't terrifying a twelve-year-old. At the moment.

 

"Well?" he snapped. "Do you accept?"

 

"Yes sir, Commander Prince Zuko, sir."

 

...He regretted it.

 

* * *

 

The airbender was out on the deck, flitting between crew stations like a half-tame humming-ferret. He never _quite_ got within arm's reach of the crew, but he would stop a few feet back and lean forward to see what they were doing like he was curious, like he'd really like to talk to them, like his kind _weren't_ threatened with extinction from people dressed in exactly the same armor.

 

Zuko was unimpressed with the airbender's survival instincts. He did not share this thought with Uncle, for fear that Uncle might say something about _his_ survival instincts. He just crossed his arms, and stood on his own spot on the deck, and kept a frowning watch over the boy.

 

"... _Should_ I lock him in, Uncle?"

 

"You have already given your word you would not." Uncle was sitting down, setting up a pai sho game based on one of the letters from his friends. There were an alarming number of old people who liked to send pai sho games through the mail. If that was what getting old did to people's minds, Zuko was never going to do it. (He didn't share this thought with Uncle, either. Because it wasn't too hard to put together the _no survival instincts means you won't have to worry about growing old_ joke on his own.)

 

"I know I did. But… do you think he's a threat?"

 

Uncle copied one of the moves in his letter, and frowned at the board. "Even the most timid mouse-rabbit will bite, if the cat-mongoose has him cornered."

 

That was one of the easier proverbs to parse. "So I made the right decision. He'd be more desperate if he was locked up."

 

"You did see how he fought the first time you tried, nephew."

 

...Yeah. He had. And he needed to run the crew through more drills, _stricter_ drills, if they couldn't stop one small boy from rampaging all over the ship. At least Zuko had been able to steal the kid's glider back before he'd escaped.

 

(This would be a lot less complicated if he _had_ escaped.)

 

(...But then Zuko would probably be chasing him across the world, still shouting about the Avatar. Agni, Zhao would have laughed himself into a coma.)

 

"Uh… can I help you?" a crewman asked. Apparently the airbender's hesitance to _shove his face right into a firebender's_ had only lasted for a half an hour. He reminded Zuko of the turtleducks back home, but even _they_ had been smart enough to fear fire.

 

"Uncle." Zuko swallowed, and lowered his voice. "Are Great-Grandfather's laws about airbenders still… _enforced?"_

 

Uncle's hand paused above the board. "It could be argued that Azulon rescinded them when he overturned the 32nd edict and replaced it with the 75th. There is no mention of airbenders in the new law."

 

Because it had been assumed they were all dead, neither of them said.

 

"And… we _could_ argue that? If someone sees him?"

 

"You intend to keep the boy on board longer than the next port?" Uncle was staring at his game, and doing that _completely neutral voice_ thing he did when he suspected Zuko was about to make the wrong choice.

 

"Until he's served his purpose," Zuko snapped.

 

"He is not the Avatar, nephew."

 

"I _know_ that. But he's the closest I've come. The only air nomad anyone's seen in a hundred years. I could… question him. Study his bending style, for when I do fight the Avatar. And it would be prudent to keep him in the safety of our custody until then." Until his first reaction to seeing the pikesmen practicing wasn't _running over to them._ Agni, what did those monks _teach_ their children? Clearly not history.

 

"Very wise, nephew," Uncle said. He was watching the boy instead of his gameboard, and Zuko had the feeling he was thinking the same thing Zuko was.

 

He didn't know how many of the regular Fire Nation troops even _knew_ about the 75th edict. Most probably assumed that Sozin's orders were still in effect.

 

That airbenders were to be killed on sight.

 

"Boy! Get away from the catapult _now_ or I will truss you up and _demonstrate its operation!"_

 

At least Lieutenant Jee would have someone else to scowl at, for a change.

 

"My name's Aang! What's y—?"

 

" _DID I ASK YOUR NAME, BOY?"_

 

...Though the lieutenant seemed to have an unhealthy amount of anger saved up for shipboard children.  

 

* * *

 

"...We're never catching up, are we?" Sokka groaned, draping himself with situationally appropriate drama over the side of the saddle. It was Katara's turn at the reigns.

 

"Maybe Appa's feeling better now? You got some sleep last night, didn't you boy—yes you did. And I know you want to find your friend. Aang is waiting for us, and he's in trouble. Could you please, please go a little faster?" Katara was rubbing the giant bison's head like it was a baby penguin-otter. "Yip-yip."

 

The bison groaned. And surged. And _flew._

 

Sokka clutched the side of the saddle and screamed, at a situationally appropriate volume.


	2. Breath Control

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To Little Zuko readers: yes I am shamelessly reusing crew names and personalities. But these ones didn't get a life-changing field trip with their prince...
> 
> Also, "%%%" means "I'm officially declaring that I'm too lazy to convert these /million page breaks/ into /real/ page breaks." And "%%%" is about the only symbol FF doesn't eat when I copy-paste, so it became my goto. So. *lazy salute of lazitude*

The airbender had made a  _ nest  _ in the holding cells. He'd taken his mattress, dragged it into the hall outside the bars, and piled blankets on top. Zuko wouldn't even be sure the boy was in there if the blankets weren't  _ blowing _ —breezing?—with his every soft snore. Moving in a way blankets generally didn't. Except when an airbender was sleeping under them, apparently. 

 

Well. Great to see how much the child trusted Zuko to  _ not _ lock him in. Zuko pinched the bridge of his nose—which had to be some kind of headache record, this soon after dawn—and tried not to take it personally. The kid was scared and alone and  _ acting as if Zuko had no honor. _

 

Since Zuko legally didn't, it was irrational to be angry over yet another person he'd just met  _ assuming _ that fact. Like his status was branded on him for all the world to see and okay, yeah, it was  _ too early for this. _ He needed to punch some fire, and not think for awhile.

 

"Airbender."

 

"Mmph," the pile of blankets said.

 

"Airbender, wake up. You will be assisting me in training today."

 

The blankets rolled over. Zuko couldn't tell if that meant the boy was facing towards or away from him. It was… a pile of blankets. Where had he even  _ gotten _ so many…? 

 

...The storage closet was down the hall. Zuko was going to need to have a  _ talk _ with the quartermaster about  _ locking doors per regulation. _ Also, he updated his cultural notes on airbenders to include 'open, shameless thieving.' Which… did not contradict the idea that they put little value on worldly possessions. Maybe property was communal, in the boy's enclave? 

 

Or maybe he was just a thief. 

 

"Airbender."

 

A hand emerged from the blankets. And  _ waved him off. _

 

Zuko reached in, and dragged the monk out by the scruff of his robes. 

 

%%%

 

Okay so Aang had  _ maybe _ overreacted a little to being woken up by an  _ angry firebender grabbing him _ but he didn't think— _ ahh! _ —that this was— _ spirits that was close _ —an appropriately proportionate reaction—

 

And really he hadn't even meant to blow the prince into a wall. Or down the hall. Or into the  _ other _ wall.

 

He had  _ definitely _ intended the part where he'd wrapped Zuko up in a blanket and  _ run away, _ but by that point there had been a lot of fire so Aang considered it completely justified and— _ AHHH! _

 

%%%

 

Iroh sipped tea, and watched his nephew  _ train _ with the airbender. They trained up and down the levels of the ship and across the deck. They trained while the crew made every effort to jump out of their way (and were somewhat hampered by the airbender's proclivity for leaping startling distances to hide directly behind them). They trained with live fire, and a considerable amount of localized wind. 

 

It was certainly instructive. 

 

%%%

 

Zuko wasn't panting. He  _ wasn't. _ But if his Uncle said  _ breath control _ he was going to—to—   

 

"Nephew," Uncle said.

 

"Don't. Say it."

 

Uncle sipped his tea. He didn't say it. "I was going to ask, in light of our new guest, if you still intended to allow the men shore leave at the Southern Air Temple. Will we be stopping there at all, or do you have a new heading on your quest?"

 

Across the deck, the airbender was perched on a railing. He was panting, too (not that Zuko was, because he wasn't). When he caught Zuko's gaze, he  _ grinned. _ And then looked immediately terrified of having grinned. Zuko scowled at one of those reactions, and didn't think too hard about which. 

 

"I'm going to interrogate him. We'll hold course for now."

 

"Good luck, nephew." Uncle continued not-to-say-it, but he made a point of taking in a deep breath, and letting out a relaxed sigh. 

 

Zuko grit his teeth, and  _ calmly strode _ towards the airbender. The airbender responded to his  _ completely peaceful approach _ by leaping to his feet—still balancing on the rail—and starting those Agni-cursed swirling motions with his arms that hadn't looked nearly as ridiculous and  _ completely overpowered evasive cheating  _ in Zuko's scrolls. 

 

"Stop _ running!" _

 

"I wasn't running. I was, ah—relocating?" the airbender replied. Still clearly intending to run. His eyes kept flicking from Zuko's scar to his hands and back again.

 

Zuko turned his face to the side. And forced his hands open, which made it significantly harder to call flames unintentionally. "What do you know about the Southern Air Temple?"

 

"Nothing. At all." Little breezes followed his hands, harder to anticipate and significantly less flashy than a firebender's unconscious bending. "Well, I know that it's there. But… I've never been?"

 

He narrowed his eyes. "You're having breakfast with me. Come here."

 

"I'm not really hun—"

 

"That was not a request."

 

"...Yes sir, Commander Prince Zuko Sir." 

 

At least one member of the crew looked at the kid with wide eyes. Then at Zuko. Then tried very hard to look like they hadn't heard anything at all.

 

…They were all going to be calling him that behind his back by the end of second shift. 

 

%%%

 

Aang had a feeling this was an interrogation. He also had a feeling that the prince of an evil war-starting-and-continuing empire should be… well, better at it?

 

"Just tell me where they are!" Prince Zuko shouted. And he looked  _ really scary, _ even if he hadn't had the scar he'd have the scary face down pat. But, ah. He wasn't actually  _ doing _ anything? Except to Aang's eardrums. 

 

"Sorry," Aang shrugged. "I forgot."

 

"You forgot. Where you live."

 

He flashed a sheepish grin. "You should  _ see _ how lost I get when I have Appa. But it's really exciting finding new places! And new friends!"

 

It was kind of  _ mesmerizing, _ watching the flames on Zuko's hands. They shifted shades with how mad he got, but they didn't actually burn anything. Ever. He had really good control for someone with really bad control.

 

"Are you even paying attention?" the prince snapped.

 

"Oh, sorry. Hey, could you pass the rice?"

 

Zuko very, very grudgingly passed the rice. It had probably been getting cold sitting on the table, but it was nice and steamy by the time it reached him. 

 

"Wow, firebending is really convenient. If I was the Avatar, I would definitely ask you to teach me how to do that. Just let me know if you ever need something cooled down! Or aired out." 

 

Aang wondered, with alarmed fascination, just how  _ on fire  _ the fire prince could get before  _ actually  _ lighting himself on fire. What air temperature did it have to be for sleeves to spontaneously combust?

 

...He probably shouldn't experiment with that.

 

...Which was a little like saying he  _ shouldn't ride the hog-monkeys _ and he  _ shouldn't fly Appa upside down unless everyone in the saddle was an airbender _ and a lot of other things he  _ probably shouldn't _ do.

 

"Hey, could you pass the soy sauce, too? But try not to heat it, it's better cold."

 

%%%

 

Zuko passed the soy sauce. And somehow managed not to curl up in a ball and die while he was at it. When it came to Avatar hunting, most of the things he interrogated were… books. Scrolls. The occasional faded mural in an overgrown ruin clinging precariously to the underside of a cliff. It had been a hundred years; living leads were a little  _ scarce. _ Sometimes he had to intimidate his way past an ancient temple guardian or stomach spirits-forsaken onion-banana juice, but he hadn't actually interrogated a  _ person _ before. Not seriously. Normally, if someone knew an old spirit tale or a half-remembered story from their grandmother, he could just sic Uncle and a pot of tea on them, and sit back to take notes. 

 

He didn't think that would work here. The airbender was obviously lying, but he was lying to protect his home, not some scrap of a story that couldn't get anyone hurt. It would take more than tea and proverbs to get it out of him.

 

The royal tutors had never covered  _ extracting information from a prisoner. _ Zuko was… familiar. With the general concepts. But he was a prince of the blood; if he needed information extracted,  _ other people  _ were supposed to do that for him. Somehow, though, the  _ Wani's _ budget hadn't had room to keep a torturer's services on retainer. Music night didn't count. 

 

...At least he'd taken them into a room for this. If he'd done it on deck, the crew would be pantomiming his failure until the next port. 

 

"Hey, is this your room?" the airbender asked, looking around with way too much interest to possibly be healthy. "Wow, your futon is the same as mine. So… I'm sleeping on a bed good enough for a prince?"

 

Zuko was the one doing the interrogating here, not the airbender. So he didn't tell the little monk how they'd bought the futons in bulk. For a discount. Or that Uncle had stolen the invoice off his desk and used his own private funds to do so, and Zuko _would_ pay him back one day, because getting new A-Man-Needs-His-Rest beds for himself and the crew was _not_ his fourteenth birthday present. 

 

"You could really use some better decorations, though. Those fire hangings look like they came with the ship." 

 

Zuko didn't curl up and die. Except on the inside. 

 

%%%

 

"How did your interrogation go?" Uncle asked. He was now playing his own one-man pai sho game, and carefully composing a letter of moves for his friends. 

 

"...We'll maintain course for the temple."

 

"Thanks for breakfast, Zuko!" the airbender shouted. Across the entire deck. "I mean, thanks for breakfast, Commander Prince Zuko Sir!"

 

%%%

 

"...The ocean is really big," her brother said. Unhelpfully.

 

"Yes, Sokka. I've noticed."

 

The Water Tribe siblings kept flying. And keeping an eye out for one very small ship on one really big ocean.

 

%%%

 

It took three more days to make it to the island of the Southern Air Temple. If it had been four, Zuko wasn't sure he could have stopped Lieutenant Jee from tying the airbender to a railing. Or a propeller. The kid was just… everywhere. Primarily where he shouldn't be. And he was  _ ruthlessly friendly _ about it, so most of the crew was left awkwardly floundering on how to politely tell him off. 

 

The lieutenant had no such social constraints. 

 

"Did I TELL you to stop?" Jee snapped at the pikesmen. Who had rather quickly aborted their practice when the airbender had  _ raced past riding a ball of air, _ because apparently that was a thing he did when he got bored. He just... circled the deck. Endlessly. "If the mosquito-fly wants to get pinned, _ oblige him!" _

 

"Wow," the boy said, coming over to hover by Zuko's side. "Your captain is kind of mean."

 

"Is there a reason you're talking to me?" Because Zuko could not fathom one. He didn't actually  _ mind, _ he was only nominally observing the drills while  _ actually _ watching the coastline slip by—the southern archipelago was beautiful, a fact he would  _ never _ admit to Uncle—but. But he really didn't know why the airbender would want to talk to him. With the exception of Uncle, people didn't just come up and  _ do _ that. They hadn't at the palace, they certainly didn't on the ship, and someone sauntering over to talk with the scarred teenager in a port town was the quickest way to spot a lady of the night. Or gentleman, because apparently Zuko didn't look like he had a preference. (But at least he looked like he had money?)

 

The kid tilted his head. With a smooth motion of his hands, he dispersed the airball, landed back on his feet, and dropped the smile for once in his life. "Why are you going to the air temple? There's nothing there."

 

Oh, the monk had an ulterior motive for talking to him. Zuko's world made sense again.

 

He stared down into grey eyes. Down, because the kid was  _ twelve.  _ Twelve and naive as a baby rabbit-squirrel coming up to a fox-cat to play, and if that wasn't a sign he'd never seen death, Zuko didn't know  _ what _ was. And those were his not-so-distant relatives up there.

 

Zuko swallowed. And started lying, hard. 

 

"I'm looking for traces of the Avatar. Scrolls and… other things. They say he was raised at the Southern Temple. It's the only place in the world I can be sure he's been."

 

The airbender's face got all scrunchy with skepticism, which was a fairly typical reaction to Zuko's attempts at lying. "You said you've been hunting him for three years. Why haven't you been here already?"

 

"I have! But it doesn't hurt to check again. We're in the area." Zuko gestured broadly at the gray seas and the green-topped cliffsides towering around them. See? The area. They were in it. 

 

"...Was there anyone there?" 

 

Zuko wasn't  _ good _ with people. He knew that. And he knew that whatever sad-strange fear-hope was on the airbender's face, he couldn't even begin to parse. So he shrugged his shoulders, and leaned against the railing, and watched a school of puffinphins play in the waves off the ship's bow. 

 

"No. No one."

 

"Oh." 

 

The kid got really quiet after that. Zuko… could do quiet. 

 

%%%

 

Maybe they were hiding.

 

Zuko was the most obviously Fire Nation person ever, so probably the monks had seen him coming from miles away, and made sure the temple was empty before he got anywhere near. They were just waiting for a real airbender to come back, that's when they'd show themselves. 

 

They had to be hiding. 

 

Aang sat down, dangling his legs through the railing, and stared up at the scrub-dotted cliffs. The fire prince kept standing next to him, like he was trying to be  _ supportive. _

 

Then Aang remembered that he'd basically stolen the prince's spot on deck and probably Zuko was just being too stubborn to give it up, and the world made sense again. 

 

%%%

 

They dropped anchor on the northern coast, where the land formed as close to a natural harbor as the island had. It wasn't the best: the air nomads and their flying bison herds hadn't been thinking of storm anchorages when they'd chosen where to settle. It was too open for Zuko's liking. But the depth readings were good, and the beaches provided inland access even to people who  _ didn't _ scale cliffs for fun, and there was fresh water not too far in.

 

His ship probably had the most accurate map of this island made in the last hundred years. Maybe even before that; the air nomads had been great travelers, but not great map makers. The freedom of the air didn't like being pinned to measurements on parchment. Or at least, that was what Zuko thought. He'd been to three of the cardinal temples and countless minor ruins, but he hadn't yet found a map made by the monks.

 

He realized he could  _ ask. _

 

"Did your people make maps?" It was the first thing either of them had said for eight degrees of the sun. This close to the south pole's summer, that was roughly an hour by the sand clocks that Uncle kept in his rooms (and Zuko really did find it  _ bizarre _ that in the Earth Kingdom, the hours of the day were as steady as bedrock, instead of changing with the light Agni shone on different places and seasons. And he  _ hated _ the mechanical clocks some Fire Nation craftsman were starting to turn out, with their perfectly regulated ticks and complete disregard for the changeability and adaptation that Agni himself had blessed their nation with). What did the Southern Water Tribe use? What did the nomads? "And what do you use for clocks? Do you  _ have _ clocks, or is time," he moved his hands, in kind of a wibbly-wobbly manner, "not something monks keep track of?" Because the world was impermanent and time an illusion, and… yeah. Zuko had read more air nomad philosophy scrolls than was strictly healthy for a sixteen-year-old who stomped scowl-blushing away from port town hookers. 

 

...The two might be related.

 

The airbender was still sitting on deck, his legs dangling over open sea and his arms on the rail above. He looked… bemused. "Of course we have maps. Um, what's a clock?"

 

"It's a… a thing. For measuring time?" Oh Agni the monk looked confused, maybe removing themselves from the world for a hundred years had shifted their culture  _ even further _ from anything resembling normal. "Which is, uh—it's a way of dividing the day into segments, for… for coordinating activities, I guess, and—"  

 

...And now the boy was grinning. Because he'd been  _ joking. _ Of course. Zuko shifted into a scowl, and turned away to yell at his lieutenant. His lieutenant, in turn, yelled at the crew. And everyone felt better. 

 

Zuko's own preparations had been done days ago. He double-checked that the mice-hoppers hadn't gotten into his food again (they  _ really _ needed to get another mimic-catopus, Sushi was getting  _ old). _ He triple-checked that he'd remembered to bring the good rope. He quadruple-checked that uncle wanted to do this with him. 

 

"I can handle it on my own," he scowled. 

 

"I know you can, Prince Zuko." Uncle shifted his weight, doing that alarming thing where he looked like he was going to hug him in front of the crew and only  _ just  _ contained himself in time. "But you should not have to."

 

Zuko didn't thank him. But he nodded, a little jerkily. Then he double-checked Uncle's food and triple-checked Uncle's rope and also the rest of his climbing gear, because Uncle was a little careless with maintaining it sometimes, and— 

 

"Sushi. No." 

 

—Evicted one self-packed cat from Uncle's bags. The old girl changed from spare-clothes-red to deck-gray as she crawled out, her fur sparking between colors as she wrap-cuddled around Zuko's leg with all of hers, her tenta-tails curling happily behind her. He scratched behind her ears as he very firmly and securely  _ closed the bag. _ He was  _ not _ accidentally carrying a cat up a cliffside again, and neither was Uncle. They had enough weight with the urns alone. It would be even worse on the way back,  _ especially _ if they had a cat with a stomach full of native species.

 

"I didn't know you had a cat!" 

 

Sushi flattened herself against the deck and turned steel-gray (with a dabbling of rust for authenticity, even the  _ cat _ made fun of his ship—) as the miniature tornado approached. Of  _ course _ small animals would be natural airbender attractants. 

 

"...Uh, where did she go?"

 

"She's a mimic-catopus. Figure it out." Zuko shifted his own pack just a little, to hide her lump from view. He stood, and crossed his arms, and stared down at the kid (and didn't twitch at all as Sushi slowly, slowly dragged one tenta-paw after the other as she edged her way between his legs and back towards the door to the lower levels.) "You are to remain on this ship and obey every order Lieutenant Jee gives you. Do you understand?"

 

"What if he orders me off the ship? Because those would be two conflicting—" the airbender was paying more attention to searching the ground than to this conversation. 

 

(Helmsman Kyo quietly closed the door that Sushi had fled through. Very rarely, in limited circumstances, Zuko  _ loved _ his crew.) 

 

" _ You will listen to Lieutenant Jee," _ Zuko barked, "or I will have to court-martial him upon my return for  _ flaying a prisoner alive. _ That would be unfortunate. He'd be hard to replace."

 

"...Uh." 

 

So the monk didn't know when Zuko was joking, either. Good to know.

 

"Lieutenant, the ship is in your hands. We'll be back in a week." 

 

The crew had readied a rowboat. Zuko set his and Uncle's bags in it, made one last check for cats, gave one last glare to the airbender hovering at the ship rail, and set out. 

 

" 'He'd be hard to replace'?" Uncle quirked an eyebrow, once they were a fair distance away.

 

Zuko finally let himself smirk. 

 

%%%

 

Land. Sweet blessed not-just-ocean-in-all-directions  _ land. _ Sokka slid off the bison and considered kissing it, but Appa turned and started  _ eating it _ before he could. Well, the bushes on it. And the grass. And at least one unfortunately scrumptious young tree.

 

"He might be faster than a canoe," Sokka commented, "but he sure eats a lot more."

 

So, islands. They'd found islands. Maybe they'd even find a ship, soon?

 

...Once their flying canoe was done refueling. And sleeping. 

 

Sokka approved of both of these activities. The bison, he decided, was an acceptable mode of transportation.

 

%%%

 

Zuko had been gone for three days and Aang was going a little crazy because what was the fire prince even  _ doing _ up in the temple? He said he'd already been here before, why had he needed to come  _ back, _ had he found some trail last time and now he was hunting down the last of Aang's people and, and— 

 

"Boy! Those komodo-rhino hides had better be silky enough to  _ wipe a noble woman's posh posterior _ or I will tan  _ yours." _

 

Aang grumbled, and kept scrubbing at Cherry Daifuku's back with the pumice stone. The rhino lowed appreciatively. In the next pen over, Wasabi Peas was rolling in the only patch of mud on the entire beach how did he even  _ find _ that, now Aang was going to have to wash him all over again— 

 

"Who even  _ named _ you?" 

 

It was mostly a rhetorical question, but the crewman scrubbing down the saddles actually answered. "The prince. We think he was going through a food phase. It's stuff he could probably get any time he wanted at the palace, right?"

 

"So why doesn't he just  _ go back?" _ Aang was maybe a little frustrated. Maybe. And could Cherry please just  _ hold still, _ he never knew a komodo-rhino could be  _ ticklish _ (he never knew he could get this close to a rideable animal and want nothing better than to stomp away from it).

 

"You  _ have _ seen our ship, right?" the crewman said. 

 

"What does that have to do with anything?"

 

"Small?" the crewman prompted. "Rusty? No railings on the lookout tower? Galley food approaching vegetarian whether we want it to or not?"

 

Aang felt like this was going somewhere. He just wasn't sure where. 

 

The crewman sighed. " _ Banished _ prince, kid. He's not going back. Welcome to the Avatar Hunt Pleasure Cruise. Next stop: wherever he throws a dart at the map. It's a good way to see the world, at least. My little sisters really like my letters." 

 

"Bad place to get promoted, though," the woman trying to fit a new bridle to Melon Dango's head said. 

 

" _ But," _ another crewman, the one trying to trim Dorayaki's toenails said, "a  _ really _ good place to avoid actual combat."

 

Lieutenant Jee glowered over at them. " _ If you ladies—" _

 

" _ Excuse me,  _ sir?"

 

"I said  _ ladies,  _ Teruko!  _ Are there any actual ladies here to take offense?  _ If you  _ ladies _ have time to gossip, you have time to _ finish before you get any lunch!"  _

 

Aang joined the chorus of groans. 

 

And turned his eyes towards the mountain again, and the temple he knew was up there. There was smoke coming from the mountain peak. A thin stream of it, since yesterday, and  _ what was Zuko doing to his home. _

 

When the groaning-complaining-joking crew was finally allowed to trudge towards the firepit the cook had started for lunch, Aang groaned right after them. Slowly. Until he was the last one. And Lieutenant Jee took his eyes off of him for just one second— 

 

Aang disappeared quick as a mimic-catopus. But, ah. With less changing colors, and more diving into the underbrush.

 

%%%

 

"...Should we go after him?" Kyo whispered.

 

"I  _ really  _ don't want to," Teruko replied.

 

And Lieutenant Jee resolved not to chase the airbender that his entire crew hadn't been able to catch while  _ contained on the fleet's smallest ship. _ Not into an island forest. Not until after lunch.

 

%%%

 

The bison was a lot faster when properly rested and fueled. This was not a flying canoe, this was a  _ sailboat on the leading edge of a typhoon.  _

 

"Woo!" Sokka screamed into the wind. And then added a preemptive brotherly, "Shut up, Katara."

 

"I didn't say anything," she said, with sisterly smugness. Like  _ she _ wasn't just as surprised that their bison-boat could not only fly, but fly so fast they could probably cross continents at the speed of plot. 

 

There was another island ahead. And a harbor. And a Fire navy ship. 

 

%%%

 

There was a white cloud flying against the wind, circling their location. Lieutenant Jee resolved not to deal with  _ that _ until after lunch, either.

 

The rest of the crew very studiously and with no particular discussion on the matter finished their meal while staring at the sand. They had three years of experience at not seeing anything even vaguely spirit or Avatar related; not while on shore leave. 

 

%%%

 

Zuko was sweaty and sooty and exhausted, but almost done. Which was good; he actually  _ would _ have time to look around for any Avatar clues he'd missed. Not that he couldn't have extended the time they had here, there was food and water and the crew wouldn't complain about  _ more _ time lounging on the beach. But he liked to keep a schedule. To make one, and stick to it. It made it feel like he was  _ doing  _ something, getting somewhere, even if the  _ somewhere _ was just  _ loops on a map. _ Patrolling the world for for Avatar clues, like maybe  _ this time _ past Whale Tail Island or Chameleon Bay he'd find something. Right. Zuko ran a sleeve over his face, let out a breath, and ran to help Uncle. Who was just supposed to help deal with them, not  _ carry them up and down a million stairs. _

 

"Give me that," Zuko snapped. But he accepted the cloth-wrapped bundle with great care. It was… small. Way smaller than it should be, it made him  _ sick _ when they were that small and he could smell the fire on them and fire shouldn't ever be so  _ wrong— _

 

"They are not heavy, nephew. And I am not so old you need to worry about my back."

 

"Yes. You are."

 

"Ah, but it is my  _ heart _ that you wound."

 

Uncle's banter was… was nice. Zuko didn't have to reply, Uncle didn't expect him to. The words just… washed over. Like the sounds of the sparrowkeets, and that one chittering lemur that kept trying to steal their food even though  _ the trees were full of fruit, _ and Zuko was regretting not bringing Sushi along to guard their bags, respect for native wildlife be damned.  

 

He let out a breath, and carried the bundle downstairs. They'd picked a spot off the main courtyard. It was best to do this over stone, especially smooth stone they could sweep properly afterwards because… because it was best. But doing it in the  _ center _ of the temple, like they had any right to be here or be doing this—they couldn't. He lay the bundle on the fire-marked spot they'd used for all the others, and took up position on one side. Uncle stood opposite. Together they took in a breath, and started the flames. 

 

Cremation didn't take much power, but it did take  _ focus. _ Low hot flames that would turn even bones to ash.

 

It went quicker, with the small ones.

 

"Breath control, nephew," Uncle reminded. So Zuko steadied himself, and just… breathed. 

When it was done, Uncle dispersed the fire and the heat, and began sweeping up what remained. Zuko went back up the stairs for the next one. The urns they'd brought were small, almost disrespectfully so, but they hadn't known how many they would need. He hadn't… hadn't  _ counted, _ last time. So he'd had to buy ones that were easy to pack, so they could bring a  _ lot. _ It looked like he'd over-estimated. Which was… it was good. It also said something about his memories of this place from last time, but it was good. 

 

...Oh Agni he needed to bathe, he was  _ filthy. _ Just a few more. He carefully picked up the next shroud-wrapped pile. Fire Nation this time, and  _ why had Great-Grandfather left troops behind.  _ It was disrespectful. Not that—not that he had any right to presume to know what Sozin had been thinking, he was a great man with incredible vision to lead their nation into the future— 

 

But who  _ did  _ that? 

 

"What are you  _ doing?" _ a voice that was  _ way too young to be here _ asked. 

 

Zuko startled. Hard. But he didn't drop the shroud as he spun around. "You're supposed to be on the ship!" 

 

"You're lighting things on fire at  _ my temple!" _

 

"You gave me your  _ word _ you'd stay—"

 

"How could I stay when you're up here doing something horrible—"

 

"—Not that I should have ever trusted the word of an air nomad, all the stories say you weren't bound by contracts like any  _ civilized _ person—"

 

"—And—"  

 

"—And the first thing you ever  _ did _ was lie to me. Twice. So great, here's the third time, does it make you  _ happy _ to break my trust?" 

 

" _ Don't yell over me!  _ You threatened to burn down a village and then you took me prisoner and now you're burning things at my  _ temple, _ what have you ever done that I  _ could  _ trust!"

 

"I didn't  _ break my word!" _

 

"That doesn't count when all you're doing are  _ horrible things!" _

 

"I don't always do horrible things! If I did I would still be  _ home!" _

 

" _ How does that even makes sense!" _

 

" _ I don't know!" _

 

They were both panting. Again. Zuko was willing to admit it this time, because he was covered in  _ soot _ and trying not to think what the soot  _ was _ and apparently he was a  _ terrible horrible person, _ and if there was one person in the world allowed to stand in the courtyard of an air temple and say that to his face it was definitely an  _ airbender. _

 

" _ What _ are you  _ doing?" _ the little monk repeated.

 

"...Laying their spirits to rest," Zuko said. Maybe too quietly, because for a moment it looked like the monk hadn't heard him. 

 

Then he realized the kid just didn't  _ understand. _

 

And then, suddenly, he did.

 

"...Oh."

 

"Sit down, airbender." Zuko set his own burden down as quick as he respectfully could, and then he  _ made _ the little monk sit down. Wait, bad idea, not  _ here _ —not when the kid understood what the half-dozen shrouds around them  _ meant. _ Zuko grabbed his arm and marched him to one of the side areas, a pretty little terrace overlooking an amazing view of island and ocean and oddly moving clouds that neither of them were really seeing.  _ Then _ he sat him down, on a ledge built into the wall. Two hands pressing down on the shoulders of one very small airbender who looked  _ weird, _ like he was somewhere between passing out and punching Zuko or maybe calling up a tempest to tear this whole place to the ground. Zuko should… he should get Uncle, was what he he should do. But that would mean leaving the kid  _ alone, _ and that seemed like the  _ worst possible idea— _

 

"Breath control," Zuko blurted. "Here, come on. Just… breathe with me."

 

So they did. For awhile. They just breathed. 

 

"Everyone died?" the monk asked. Which was Zuko's cue to take his hands off his shoulders, to stop  _ touching him. _ He leaned back against a wall nearby, instead.

 

"Not everyone," Zuko said. "Your people made it."

 

Which… wasn't the right thing to say, apparently, because the kid leaned forward and hugged his knees. "How did this happen?"

 

Zuko didn't know if that was a how that was a  _ how, _ or a how that was a  _ why. _ He answered the first. It was easier. "Sozin's comet. It, um. It comes every hundred years, and it… gives firebenders more power." He swallowed. "A lot more. It… wouldn't have really been a fight."

 

"They wouldn't have  _ fought," _ the airbender said. "We're  _ pacifists." _

 

Pacifists backed into a corner. Which was a lot like uncle's cornered mouse proverb the other day. There had been… rooms here, rooms he was glad he and Uncle had cleared out so the kid would  _ never _ see. Places the monks and their students had  _ definitely _ fought back. Especially that one guy, with the necklace—the bones had been in  _ layers  _ around him, what kind of commander sent his men into a kill zone like that? What kind of pressure had the troops been under that they  _ went? _ Zuko didn't understand, he  _ didn't. _

 

"I don't understand," the airbender said. 

 

So Zuko slid down the wall and sat next to him, and they didn't understand together. Just breathed. Uncle probably checked on him at some point, he'd been gone a  _ long _ time, but he didn't see the old dragon and whatever  _ Uncle  _ had seen was apparently not enough to get him to rescue Zuko from sitting next to the great-grandson of the people his great-grandfather had murdered. Not murdered,  _ killed _ —he couldn't think murdered, that made it sound like it was  _ wrong, _ and if he thought it too much he might  _ say _ it and if he said it someone might  _ hear _ and then they'd  _ tell _ because  _ they always did, _ and he didn't need father thinking he was harboring treasonous thoughts on top of every other way he'd failed the man. 

 

...Zuko really, really needed to go find a nice place to kick around fire for awhile. But the airbend—the  _ prisoner's _ health was his responsibility, so he stayed.

 

"The comet comes every hundred years," the little monk said, eventually.

 

"Yeah."

 

"It's been a hundred years." 

 

"Yeah."

 

"When will it be here?"

 

"The end of summer," Zuko said. "Well, the northern hemisphere's summer. Not  _ this _ summer. About eight months."

 

Something in the kid's face tightened. "What will you do with it this time?"

 

%%%

 

Aang watched the fire prince closely. He kept expecting… fire. Especially after he asked that. But Zuko just leaned his head back against the wall, and shrugged. 

 

"Watch. We're scheduled to be around the eastern edge of the Earth Kingdom by then."

 

His hands tightened over his knees. "What will your  _ father _ do with it?"

 

Zuko didn't answer. Just… shrugged again, a little, and turned his face away. 

 

...Aang had to stop the Fire Lord, before the comet came. 

 

The  _ Avatar _ had to stop the Fire Lord, before the comet came.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ever wondered why the Southern Air Temple was full of bones, but the Western was clear? If the White Lotus or anyone else cared enough to lay the airbenders to rest, they'd have done it everywhere. Which implies to me that no one particularly cares. So, who do we know is a secret softy who had three years of nothing-much-to-do and a lot of carefully repressed guilt about his ancestor's actions, and who definitely visited the Western temple before the Gaang got there? I'm totally nominating Zuko for the Not As Bad of a Grave Desecrator As He Could Have Been award. Also, Zuko had to have done something besides just angst and shout disrespectfully for three years, or Uncle wouldn't have had nearly as much faith that his nephew still had a good heart.
> 
>  
> 
> Cheating-at-Pai-Sho!Zuko totally scheduled this air temple visit for after the south pole trip so he wouldn't be shivering in artic seas while also super depressed. Good mental self-care, Zuko. Pat-on-back. Hug your cat.
> 
>  
> 
> On a lighter note, I maintain that Sushi is canon. What self-respecting ship doesn't have a ship's cat? If you look very closely at the background of ship scenes in the show, you may be so fortunate as to spot the elusive mimic-catopus in its native habitat, ie, mooching off of sailors.
> 
>  
> 
> Trivia: Sushi was originally a chameleon-cat, and then I started writing an author's note about how I know that's not how real chameleon coloring works but a mimic-octopus-cat sounds like the start of a Lovecraftian shipboard horror. At which point my brain fizzled because why was I talking myself out of that, exactly? So. Please enjoy the newly edited eldritch horror, which can be found purring in the dark void of Zuko's room at night. Possibly while attached to the ceiling by its many many tenta-paws.
> 
>  
> 
> The name 'Sushi' also got about a million times more hilarious when applied to an octopus. Sorry, I meant catopus.


	3. It Starts and Ends with a Bison Crash

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Americans: Happy 4th of July!
> 
> Brits: Happy Ungrateful Colonials Day!
> 
> Everyone Else: Happy New-Season-of-Stranger-Things!
> 
> Ya'll are lucky my spousal unit slept in until literal noon, or the marathon watch would have put this chapter off by a day or two. 
> 
> On the subject of comment replies: I'm starting to get a lot of comments across my fics (especially Towards the Sun crowd, who have given me literal hundreds of comments on those last two chapters). Working on the assumption that most of you would prefer new chapters to comment replies, I'm no longer going to be replying to all comments. I'll still reply as time allows, but it's absolutely nothing personal if you don't get a reply—it's just a "there is literally not time in the day" issue. Please know that I read them and love them and they truly inspire me. You fuel my inner flame. <3 (For the record, AO3 comments stand a much higher chance of getting a reply, because the system over here is much more author-friendly than FF.)

Sokka kept pulling at the reins. The sky bison kept pulling the other way. They were arguing in great big circles in the sky and he was really starting to wish for a canoe, nevermind that a canoe wouldn't have been flying in the first place, unless he'd done something _very wrong_ (or… very right?) (Man, wouldn't that be cool if someone somewhere invented a flying canoe-thing? He could just picture it now, soaring majestically and _turning the direction it was told—)_

 

"The ship! Is right there!" he shouted, in case deafness was the creature's problem. "That mountain did not take him, the ship did! _Object recognition, you gigantic uncooked steak!_ "

 

The bison groaned and shook its head. Sokka held onto the reins with one hand and a horn with the other because he wasn't really sure how _invested_ the bison was in keeping him in the air.

 

Katara crawled carefully out of the saddle and up next to him, and _of course_ that's when the flying fluffball settled down. "You didn't see it, Appa, but we did; they took Aang onto that ship. Can we please go down and check? If he's not there, we can go to your mountain next."

 

The bison groan-muttered in a really _surly_ way. Sokka wasn't biased in this assessment at all. But at least it started heading for the ship.

 

Katara smiled and thanked it and rubbed it on the spot right above its ear, spoiling it like she always had the polar bear dogs, which was exactly way no one ever let her _train_ the polar bear dogs. Then she crawled back to the saddle, and gripped the side.

 

The bison turned its head and looked at her grip with a giant black eye. And looked at Sokka, not-having-a-grip.

 

Which gave Sokka all the warning he was going to get before it _dove straight down._

 

%%%

 

The cloud came screaming down towards the deck, in a more literal manner than the crew was used to.

 

"Huh," Crewman Teruko said, briefly pausing at mahjong. She instinctively put a hand over her tiles as she turned to stare up, because Hawker Genji was an unabashed cheater and spirit-shenanigans had never stopped him from fleecing the rest of the crew.

 

"Tch," Genji said.

 

The cloud grew closer. Took on definition. Became something with a brown arrow on its head, and…. six legs. 

 

"The f—" Engineer Hanako began to summarize the situation with her usual eloquence.

 

"Language," Lieutenant Jee snapped habitually, even though the prince wasn't thirteen anymore and the general wasn't there to _quietly disapprove_ of them.

 

The six-legged furry cloud-thing hit the deck with a resounding _boom,_ knocking over Helmsman Kyo and his lost-the-last-game mop bucket, and sending exactly zero player tiles skittering across the game table. Everyone had covered theirs.

 

"You guys have terrible priorities," Genji groused. 

 

"I'm going to be sick," the sky-beast moaned, from the top of its head. 

 

"Not on the deck, please?" Kyo gripped his mop like a spear. A spear held by a guy who was a Helmsman, not a Pikeman. 

 

The beast whuffed. And then two Water Tribe children jumped down off of it, shouting. 

 

"Give us back the Avatar!" the girl said.

 

"Or else," the boy said, with shakier enthusiasm. And stance. And a general greenish tinge to his dark skin.

 

Kyo offered him the empty mop bucket. The tribesman glared at him, raising some kind of animal-bone club. The Helmsman cringed back, and—

 

Teruko caught movement out of the corner of her eye. The new guy had an _actual_ spear. And a look in his eyes like he didn't realize they were dealing with _literal children._ She made a grab for him, knocking over her chair and closing one hand around his waist and one hand on the haft of his spear in case he got any bright ideas about throwing the thing, which… made for two hands. That were not defending her tiles. 

 

" _Yes,"_ Genji said. 

 

"You better have a _very good excuse_ for denting our ship, Water Tribe," Teruko growled. 

 

"Give us," the girl said again, taking a step forward like that was supposed to be menacing. "The Avatar."

 

"He ran," Lieutenant Jee said. He pointed a thumb back over his shoulder, towards the forest they'd made a token effort to search after lunch, and the suckers who had drawn short straws were _still_ searching. "That way. Knock yourselves out." 

 

"...You sure you don't want the bucket?" Kyo asked. 

 

" _No,_ I don't want the— You are all being _suspiciously helpful,"_ the boy said. "And where is your shouting teenage anger problem?"

 

"He went that way, too," Kyo helpfully replied.

 

"...Why does that make an alarming amount of sense." The boy kept his club raised, darting suspicious gazes all around. The crew had weapons at hand, or bending at breath, but… in three years of Avatar-hunting, they had dealt with a lot weirder than two kids and a huge-but-tangible-(and-presumably-burnable) flying-bison-thing.

 

Except for the new guy. The new guy was _hyperventilating_ under her arm. So that was great. 

 

"Could you move?" Kyo said, motioning to the deck under their feet with his mop. "I need to, ah..."

 

"Oh sure, sure," the boy stepped back. "Sorry. ...WHY ARE YOU NOT BEING EVIL?"

 

"Uh… I'm not currently under orders to be evil. Am I, sir?"

 

Lieutenant Jee sighed one of his _do I really have to answer these questions_ sighs. "No, Helmsman. You are not."

 

"Right. Just moping, no evil. And you're really young, so it's not like I'm actually feeling threatened right now. What are you, thirteen?"

 

" _Fifteen."_

 

"Fourteen!" the girl said, like she was feeling a little ignored. Some of the mop water on the deck jumped, which… Teruko noted, in the corner of her brain that also noticed the girl's stance was _terrible,_ and that the Southern Raiders had apparently missed one (though not the people who could have taught her). 

 

"Wow, that's great. You're so grown up." Kyo smiled like a guy who was both cripplingly sincere and completely crap at dealing with children. "But I'm still pretty sure I could take you with this mop."

 

"I'm a warrior!"

 

"That's nice. I'm a helmsman. Oh, ah. Sorry about running into your village. I tried to aim for the sturdier-looking ice, but not _too_ sturdy because I like not destroying the bow of my ship while in enemy waters. Not that you were really enemies, I mean your village was so _small_ and I felt really bad about it—"

 

"Wait. Wait wait. That was _you?"_ the boy was re-brandishing his club. 

 

Kyo looked more puzzled than concerned. "Yeah. Uh, I'm a helmsman? I said that, right?"

 

 _"Why?"_ the girl demanded.

 

"Orders," Kyo shrugged. 

 

"You… _you."_ the boy said, gesturing with his weapon alarmingly close to Kyo's head. (In Teruko's arms, the new guy bucked.) "You… weren't kidding about the evil-orders. How… What…" 

 

Behind them, the flying beast was sniffing at the air. It turned and stared in the direction the airbender had gone, towards the temple mountain. It crouched down, hunkering on its unnecessarily many legs like a whole flock of albatross-roos about to take off. 

 

"Sokka—!" the girl said, scrambling to get back up to the saddle. 

 

"Clubs beat mops!" the boy shouted, and scurried after her.

 

"They're not really directly comparable weapons, but sure. Nice meeting you!"

 

The flying beast took off. The deck made a sad straining noise and popped back up, leaving only a small crease where the bison-dent had been.  

 

"...Did you just awkward them off the ship, Kyo?" Teruko asked.

 

"It's a talent," The Helmsman shrugged modestly. And… flushed. "Umm. Do you want me to help with Kazuto? I could, uh. Bring him to the infirmary. Or to bed."

 

Teruko shook the new guy, just a little. His breathing had gotten a whole lot better once the blue-clad kids had left his sight. "Hey. You okay?"

 

"Was that… normal?" Pikeman Kazuto asked. It was questions like that that cemented his 'new guy' status, even though he'd been with them for four months now.

 

"Eh," Teruko said. "Better than spirits. Can't stab those. Come on, you look like you need some of Cook's spiced cocoa."

 

"I could take him there," the Helmsman offered. "Really. Wouldn't want to interrupt your game."

 

"Yeah," Genji said. "Wouldn't want to interrupt our game."

 

Teruko eyed the Hawker, and her undefended tiles that might or might not be the same ones she'd had when she stood up. Then she steered the new guy towards the stairs. "...I've got this." 

 

Kyo watched them go, sagging over his mop. 

 

"So," Engineer Hanako said. "You and the new guy…?"

 

"Shut up," he sighed. "...And now I have to scrub giant footprints off the deck. It flies, how does it have _dirt_ on its feet?" He returned to his mopping, with significantly more muttering.

 

"We could have told them he's not the Avatar," Genji said.

 

"I could have done a lot of things with my life," Lieutenant Jee said.

 

Which was altogether too real, and needed to be cleansed with a new game.

 

%%%

 

Uncle had finished with the last of the shrouded forms by the time they came down. The urns were lined up in two distinct groups that needed no explanation. They'd inked names onto the ones they could identify, mostly the soldiers—it wasn't uncommon for them to have been carrying a letter from home, or to have scratched their name in the back of their armor. For the rest of them… they'd have to cross-reference with the records of troop deployment, if they could get their hands on them. They obeyed their Fire Lord's orders and died for it: they deserved to return to their ancestral shrines. The Air Nomads… he didn't know. If they could get into the inner sanctuary this time, maybe they could leave them there.

 

Or... he could ask.

 

"Airbender. Um, Aang. What should we… do with the…" He was _terrible_ at asking. "The only scrolls I've found about Air Nomad burial customs weren't written by actual Air Nomads, and they were… probably not right." Seriously, who hacked up their loved one's bodies and tossed the parts to _vulture-coyotes?_ 'Sky burials' sounded like something Sozin's propagandists had come up with to emphasize how abnormal airbenders were, and how little respect they paid to any life, including their own venerable ancestors— 

 

"...Do you have any bison milk? Or flour?" 

 

Zuko preemptively glowered down at the little monk. If this was a _joke…_ But the kid wasn't looking back at him, and he definitely wasn't smiling. He was staring down at the urns of his own people, his arms wrapped around himself, and just… not passing out. Which was an achievement Zuko was willing to acknowledge. 

 

"Why?" he asked. 

 

"We don't cremate. But. But if they were up here for a hundred years than the vulture-coyotes already—" The boy continued not to pass out. Zuko continued to be impressed. "I guess what you did counts as breaking down the bones. So… we need to mix them with something, so the crow-hawks can have their share. Then they'll go back to the sky."

 

...Or maybe Zuko's scrolls had been completely accurate, and the Air Nomad disrespect for the dead was just one of those backwards cultural things he was going to have to deal with. Like the Earth Kingdom burying people in sunless, airless holes for worm-roaches to eat and _leaving_ them there, taking up great tracks of land with _rotting corpses_ (and if that wasn't a sign they had more land than they needed, Zuko didn't know _what_ was). And the Water Tribes sinking their dead into the dark-cold of the ocean to bloat. They lived on the sea, how did they _not_ know what decomposition did to water-logged bodies? 

 

"We don't have bison milk, or flour. Just naval rations. I'm not sure the crow-hawks would want them," especially not full of _corpse-ash,_ "but we could try."

 

He tried to keep the disgust off his face. 

 

%%%

 

Aang tried to keep the disgust off his face. Zuko and his uncle had _meant_ well, that had to count for something, but if he thought too hard about how they'd taken people murdered by the Fire Nation, people he knew, people he couldn't even picture right now because they were just piles of ash stoppered up in confining airless pots after their bodies had been _burned to ash,_ he was going to throw up. 

 

"There's… there's another way. At the Northern Temple they scatter the bone-dust to the winds."

 

"Right. Okay." Zuko's shoulders slumped, like he was _relieved._ "Let's do that."

 

So… they did. The prince was _really efficient_ when he got moving. He had the urns tucked into an empty wooden case before Aang could even really help, and why had he had a case in the first place and why did it fit the urns so perfectly— 

 

That question. Kind of answered itself, didn't it? 

 

"There's a good spot this way," the prince said. "Or. I think it's good. Just… tell me if you see a better one, okay?"

 

It was the same spot Aang would have picked. Up five stair cases, and over to the far side of the temple, where a balcony overhung the cliff and the winds were strong and below them was a river of clouds. He'd flown here a lot, the air currents were the _best,_ all bumpy-chaotic but actually really gentle, so even the smallest kids couldn't _really_ get in trouble. Unless they flew into the side of the cliff like Gansho had that one time, oh man that had been really _scary-funny—_

 

The prince was unpacking the urns, and laying them out at the balcony's edge. 

 

Aang had flown here a lot. So had everyone. 

 

"Are you… going to do this with me?" he asked.

 

The prince startled, looking up at him with wide gold eyes, like a half-grown fox-leopard. "Oh. I could… Go." 

 

He'd set each urn in a careful line. Many of them had trinkets looped around them: bracelets or necklaces, each distinctive, worn by time and weather in a way they hadn't been when Aang had seen them last. Zuko and his uncle had tried to make each urn identifiable, without ever knowing their names, or how they sounded when they laughed, or anything except where and how they died. Which was the only thing Aang _didn't_ know about them. Between him and Zuko, they knew everything. Beginning to end. 

 

"You can stay. If you want. You came all this way to help; I don't think they'd mind." And Aang didn't want to be alone.

 

The prince nodded, sort of jerkily. And swallowed. And stayed. He remained kneeling, handing each jar up to Aang, and Aang… let them go. The winds took the ash up. The clouds down below took the urns, and the trinkets, and kept flowing on. 

 

"Are you doing that?" the prince asked, his eyes following the ashes as they hung in the air, swirling and mixing, making patterns that were almost pictures before breaking apart again, little black drifts on a background of white and blue. 

 

"No," Aang said. "It's important that it's natural. That way they get where they're meant to go, not where someone wants them to be." 

 

Zuko handed him the last urn. A necklace was wrapped around it; faded red tassles on either side of a broad wooden pendant carved with air symbols. He hadn't seen it in days. In a hundred years.

 

...It really had been a hundred years.

 

He squeezed his eyes shut, and remembered Monk Gyatso's smile and how he raised just one eyebrow instead of talking sometimes, and… and lots of things that he'd thought he'd get to see again, and he never would, and it felt like if he could just _go back_ he could make it right, never leave, fix it all or stay with them when it happened so he wouldn't have to stand here alone and, and…

 

(He wasn't alone.) 

 

The monks taught that people and pain were both impermanent. The people were gone, and the pain would be too. Someday. It was okay to hurt. The monks taught that, too. That it was natural to feel for as long as he needed to. There was no shame in feeling, and there would be no shame when one day he would realize the feeling was lighter and he was living without them and living without hurting, that he'd let them go.

 

He opened the last urn. The wind swirled down to take Gyatso away, brushing against Aang's hands like it had spent a hundred years waiting for him to come home. 

 

%%%

 

If the monk was crying, Zuko didn't see it. That was how things worked in the Fire Nation: no one cried. And a lot of people didn't see.

 

He thought of the urns back at home; Lu Ten and Grandfather and Great-Grandfather and all the others, sitting in neat rows in the family shrine. A part of him didn't understand what the little monk was doing at all; who would _want_ to be cast aside, to never go _home,_ even in death?

 

(And a small part of him watched the ashes swirling unfettered in the wind, and understood perfectly.)

 

(That was the part of himself that needed to _shut up,_ if he ever wanted father to forgive him.)

 

"Why were they still here?" the airbender asked. "Why didn't anyone… Even if they got it _wrong,_ if they burned them or buried them, why didn't anyone do anything?"

 

"People don't care," Zuko said. It was one of those truths of the world that it didn't hurt to learn early.

 

"Except you." 

 

Zuko was still kneeling on the balcony, next to the empty box. The monk was looking down at him with some kind of _weird_ expression on his face, something Zuko couldn't even start to understand. The kid was still holding the last urn, his fingers curled in the beads of the necklace wrapped around it. And he _completely didn't care_ that he was crying, so Zuko had to turn away to give them both a little dignity. 

 

"I _don't_ care," he said. "About anything. Except finding the Avatar."

 

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the little monk let the urn fall. But he kept holding on to the necklace. And kept holding on. At least he finally scrubbed his eyes with a sleeve, so Zuko could look back.

 

"You could keep it." he nodded to the necklace. "If you want. They're your people; you have the right."

 

The kid fidgeted with the beads. They were thick and wooden, and still had traces of bright paint that the rain hadn't completely stolen away. "We're not supposed to keep things after people die. It's… too permanent." 

 

"He's already waited a hundred years. Just throw it away when you're ready." Zuko shrugged, and something in his words set the kid off _again._ He had no dignity; none. Zuko jerked his gaze away. "Besides, maybe he'd like to see the world. That's… what we do, on my ship. Unless you want to tell me where to bring you home…?"

 

The kid sniffle-laughed. "You're _really bad_ at interrogations. I bet when you find the actual Avatar, he'll just say 'I'm totally not the Avatar' and you'll believe him."

 

"Shut up, airbender."

 

When he looked back, the kid was wearing the necklace. And smiling, just a little. "There's something I want to show you." He held out a hand. Zuko stared at it. "You're supposed to take it. So I can help you stand up."

 

"...I can stand on my own."

 

"That is _not_ the point," the airbender said, and kept holding out his hand. So Zuko… took it. 

 

He regretted his life choices immediately, as the airbender _literally dragged him_ through corridors and down stairs, aided by just enough wind to propel himself forward and keep Zuko stumbling after. 

 

They stopped in a small courtyard, in front of a statue wearing the same necklace the kid wore now. Must be a popular design.

 

"This is Monk Gyatso," the kid said. "He was… um, they told a lot of stories about him. About how he was super nice and funny and he cheated a pai sho _all the time,_ and—"

 

Zuko stood there, a little dazed, wondering if he should take notes on airbender culture. 

 

"Why did a monk get a statue?" he asked, in one of the rare lulls as the kid caught his breath. "Isn't that the _opposite_ of impermanence?"

 

The airbender grinned. "That's _another_ funny story. See, Gyatso traveled a lot, and helped all kinds of people. One time he helped carry medicine all the way down from the Northern Water Tribe to the southern Fire Nation—"

 

Zuko jolted. Because… the Water Tribes? _Helping_ the Fire Nation? With Air Nomad assistance? This Gyatso had probably been dead for _centuries._  

 

"—and they were so grateful that they commissioned an Earth Kingdom artist to make a statue! But they wanted it to be a _surprise_ so they didn't tell anyone, and suddenly this ship docks in the harbor and a team of komodo-rhinos drags a _huge box_ up the mountain, and bam, they just set it down in the middle of the courtyard, this giant granite statue, all _super proud._ But the monks were like '...That is the guadiest thing ever, we're going to push that off the cliffside as soon as they're gone,' and they _did,_ but they didn't wait long enough and the people in the harbor spotted them doing it. So they came back up and asked why they _did_ that, and the monks said 'We didn't. It was a stray breeze. But if we _did,_ it would be because we don't keep permanent images of people.' And all the Fire Nation villagers huddled together, and then one of them looked right at the monks and said, 'Define permanent.' And the monks said 'If you have to ask, it's permanent', which is kind of how they started a _lot_ of their sentences, I mean, the monks _I_ know do. I don't actually know if these ones did because it's not like I was there or anything. But anyway, Gyatso and his student were watching all this and laughing _really hard._ And three months later the villagers came back and dragged up _another box,_ and inside was a _wooden_ statue. 'Look, it's impermanent,' they said. 'The only way it'll become _permanent_ is if a _stray breeze_ pushes it off the cliffside. Then we'll have to keep replacing it. Over. And over. And over—" 

 

Zuko made token efforts to free his hand throughout this speech, but the kid kept snatching it back and _excitedly gesturing with it._

 

"He almost looks like he's smiling," he said. "...Did monks smile?"

 

The airbender grinned up at him. "Only when they're throwing pies at other monks."

 

"...What."

 

"I'll show you some time," the kid promised, somehow managing to smile _wider._

 

"No thanks."

 

"It would be my honor."

 

Zuko flinched at the h-word, and looked away. Not before he saw the little monk's smile turn to confusion.

 

"You should go back to the ship." He finally managed to tug his fingers free. "We'll be up here for a few more days."

 

"Looking for the Avatar?"

 

"Always."

 

He didn't know why, but that made the kid _smirk._ Zuko might have given it more thought, but a noise caught his attention. A really distinctive cutting whistle, one he'd heard before, but which… didn't make sense here. He turned towards the noise, trying to spot what had to be some weird bird or frog or lemur, because it _couldn't_ be a boomer—

 

%%%

 

Aang winced in reflexive sympathy, and just as reflexively caught the fire prince as he slumped.

 

"Aang!" Katara shouted, and she was here and running forwards and _here_ and smiling and she looked like she wanted to hug him and seemed _really confused_ when he didn't drop Zuko to immediately enter her arms. Actually, he was a little confused by that too.

 

"Aang, step away from the ashmaker." 

 

...And she'd brought her older brother, too. Great.

 

Zuko groaned, his head lolling against Aang's shoulder. Aang eased him down to the ground. 

 

"How hard did you _hit_ him, Sokka?" he asked. 

 

"Uh, hard enough?" The tribesman caught his boomerang as it came whistling back around. "Come on, let's _go,_ your bison is—"

 

Appa lumbered into the courtyard.

 

"—Is _really bad_ at following simple commands. I told you to _stay._ Your head is the size of a polar-bear dog, how do you not understand _stay?"_

 

Appa walked past the teen, looking like he wanted to lick Aang and then get some quality cuddles. He seemed just as confused as Katara when Aang didn't come running to him, either. 

 

"We're rescuing you," Sokka said slowly, like he suddenly realized this might need explaining. "This. Is a rescue. Which means we should leave Mister Creepy Bad Man on the ground now, and fly off on your magical bison, and go on some kind of Avatar adventure—"

 

"...Avatar?" Zuko's eyes fluttered open at the word because _of course_ they did. And wow, he could go from unconscious to jumping up with fire on his fists _really fast._  

 

"Wait, no, stop!" Aang wrapped his ams around Zuko, kind of side-tackle-hugging him, and now the fire prince looked just as confused as Katara and Appa. But only about half as confused as Sokka, who had the _best_ how-is-this-my-life face. 

 

"...Why are you touching me?" The fire prince still looked _really dazed._ And there was a definite bruise starting on the super pale skin of his forehead, right where it would be hidden if he believed in hair. 

 

"I would also like to know the answer to that question," Sokka seconded.  

 

Aang shuffled his feet somewhat awkwardly, looking at them around the side of the prince. "Sokka, Katara. This is Prince Zuko. He's… not as big of a jerk as he could be?"

 

"You are still touching me," the prince pointed out. He didn't seem to know what to do with this information. 

 

"Prince Zuko, this is Katara and Sokka of the Southern Water Tribe, and Appa of the South-Western Air Bisons."

 

Appa whuffed in the prince's face. The prince didn't know what to do with that, either. 

 

"Okay then," Sokka said. "Introductions complete. We'll just be leaving, then. With our Avatar."

 

"He's not the Avatar," Zuko scoffed. He also kind of shook his arms out a little, like he was testing whether that would get Aang off him. But honestly, Aang was starting to think anyone this baffled at getting hugged probably _needed_ more hugs, and hugs seemed to be natural flame retardants, so he… kept holding on. 

 

"I'm really not," Aang grinned. And gave the prince an extra huggy squeeze, which made him go _super stiff_ like he'd just been wrapped up by a mongoose-constrictor instead of a twelve-year-old (or like he would have _preferred_ the mongoose-constrictor.) 

 

"Wait, what? So we just left our homes and continental ice sheet and swam and/or flew for _days_ to rescue some random non-Avatar kid?"

 

" _Sokka._ We are rescuing _Aang,_ whether he's the Avatar or not. ...You're not?" She sounded a little heartbroken. 

 

Aang wanted to say _definitely not_ and wink, but he also wanted to not have Zuko catch him doing that. "I kind of panicked when Prince Zuko was lighting your village on fire—"

 

"I did not light their village on fire!"

 

"—and he _really_ wanted an Avatar, so… I figured I'd just go along with it?"

 

"Wait," Sokka turned to Zuko. "So you kidnapped a random child? I mean, not that kidnapping a random Avatar-child would be any better, but… seriously? That's low, even for the Fire Nation."

 

"Shut up, peasant," the prince ground out. His hands started to spark, but then he glanced at Aang still clinging to him, let out a breath, and shook them out. "Airbender. _Let go."_

 

Yeahnope. Aang was just going to keep hugging him. 

 

"Well, the rescue is still valid," Sokka said. "So just… let go of the not-as-big-a-jerk-as-he-could-be, and let's go. Even if you are a big fat liar and not the world's last hope, and I don't even know _how_ I'm going to start explaining that to Gran-Gran when we get back..."

 

"He didn't actually lie to us," Katara pointed out. "Just to, umm..."

 

"Zuko," Zuko said. "It's two syllables. How can you _not_ remember two syllables?"

 

"Oh really," Sokka said, "do you remember _my_ two syllables?"

 

"Peasant," Zuko said, with kind of a _hilarious_ smirk and Aang had to admit that was a good one, but also he had to drag Zuko back a few steps because Sokka looked ready to use his boomerang again and _wow,_ that metal was a _lot_ sharper close up, and if Zuko would stop baring his teeth and trying to struggle _towards it_ Aang could definitely help him _not get hit again—_

 

"...Right," Katara said. "He lied to Zuko, but—"

 

" _Prince_ Zuko."

 

"That's three syllables!" Sokka protested, and was ignored by all.

 

"—he told _us_ he only _knew_ people who knew the Avatar."

 

"You WHAT?"

 

Okay Aang was letting go of the fire prince now. Also, patting smoke off his sleeves. Also… cowering a little?

 

"Where is he?" Zuko loomed over him, with his super-scary-face back on, the one he hadn't used for days. "How old is he? How many elements has he mastered?"

 

 _In front of you, twelve, one._ "He died!" Aang blurted. "Before I was born. So. I knew people who knew him, but… I never met him?"

 

Zuko narrowed his eyes. And loomed some more. And then… kind of deflated, and pinched the bridge of his nose. "So the Avatar is Water Tribe now. Great. That's… great. When did he die?"

 

"Umm." Any date he could give would result in Zuko harassing a whole age-group of people. "We… don't really keep track of that? Because defining a person's life by numbers would, uh, make it harder for their spirit to find freedom within the transient nature of reality, and… stuff."

 

"And stuff," the prince squeezed his eyes shut. And pinched his nose _harder._

 

"So all I know is that some of the older monks knew him, and that he is definitely dead now. And not an airbender." Aang nodded in complete agreement with himself. Zuko didn't see it, but he thought it really added something to his voice.

 

Zuko cracked an eye. His good one. "...Is this a ploy so I don't track down your people?" 

 

Aang didn't even have to fake his _I hadn't even thought of that_ expression. Because his people were… already tracked down.

 

...He didn't have to fake turning pale, either. So. Great.

 

The fire prince sighed like a person who'd spent three years practicing frustrated sighs, and dropped his hand, and glared at each of them in turn (including Appa. Who snorted back, because Appa was twenty times his size and Not Impressed.)

 

"If the Avatar is Water Tribe now, this place is useless. I'm… going back to the ship. You'd _better_ meet me there, airbender. Remember, you're my prisoner." He turned, and started stomping away. His stomping wasn't _nearly_ as impressive on stone as it was back on the steel ship, Aang noticed.

 

"Huh," Sokka said. "So… we're escaping now, right?"

 

" _Sssh,"_ Katara said.

 

The prince's shoulders tensed, and he missed a step, but he kept walking. 

 

%%%

 

The little monk was probably lying. Almost certainly lying. _Everything out of his mouth_ was a lie. And if the Air Nomad Avatar was still alive, then Aang's enclave was Zuko's best lead. It was probably _where he was._ But.

 

But.

 

He didn't have the men to storm a whole Air Nomad settlement. And he couldn't ask father, father expected him to do this _alone—_  

 

(If father believed him, he'd send an army. They'd burn everything, and it would be another hundred years until anyone cared enough to lay the bodies to rest.) 

 

A Water Tribe Avatar was… was good news. They might even be young enough that they only knew their own element; young enough he stood a chance against them. When he found them, which he would, because this was new information, a new lead, he could work with this, he didn't _need_ to track the little monk's enclave down or put it on any Fire Nation maps (and if the kid had lied to him, he could come back to the southern seas later. There weren't _that_ many islands here, and Zuko had a surplus of free time.) 

 

In other words: he knew the monk was going to run away on him. He would take his friends and his sweet-spirits-that-was-actually-a-flying-bison, and if they were both lucky, Zuko wouldn't ever see him again. That was good. One less mouth to feed on his ship, one less annoying kid who came up and tried to _talk to him_ like that was a thing people _did_ (not to mention that Zuko had been touched more in the past hour than in the past three years, and it _tingled)._  

 

The kid would have run away at the first port anyway, because _clearly_ Zuko's crew couldn't be expected to watch him. It was better that he left with people he trusted. 

 

Hopefully they had better survival instincts.

 

%%%

 

"...No," Sokka said. "That is a terrible idea. A terrible idea that makes me _very concerned_ for your survival instincts, and why do you keep looking over the railing, I am trying to explain to you why staying with the guy who kidnapped you is a _terrible horrible idea."_  

 

"I'm just making sure Zuko's really gone. He has freaky-good hearing. One time he tripped while training and I laughed at him from all the way across the ship, I had my hand over my mouth and everything, and he turned around and _looked right at me."_

 

"Aang," Katara said, "why do you _want_ to go with him?"

 

Aang gestured them both closer. No, closer. Yes, Appa too, everyone join the huddle. "Because I'm the Avatar."

 

"Umm," Sokka stated the general Water Tribe opinion on this matter. 

 

"When we first met, I lied to you. I didn't _know_ the Avatar, I _am_ the Avatar, but I was afraid to say so because I don't _want_ to be, but I _have_ to be now, I'll explain later but basically there's a comet of doom coming—"

 

"There's _what."_

 

"It's okay, we don't have to worry about it for eight months. So anyway, when we were on Zuko's ship I realized he didn't know if I was the Avatar for _sure_ so I lied and said I _wasn't_ and he believed me. It's perfect!"

 

Sokka and Katara exchanged looks. Appa whuffed. Aang bounced in place, waiting for them all to catch up with his brilliance. 

 

"...What's perfect?" Katara asked, kind of smiling like sometimes the monks did when a super young boy ran up talking too fast for anyone to understand. Or maybe that was just how they looked when _he_ talked.

 

Aang took in a breath and let it out slow, which is what Gyatso always told him to do. He touched the necklace, for luck. Okay. Try two. "He's looking for the Avatar. I'm the Avatar. But he doesn't _think_ I'm the Avatar."

 

Katara nodded encouragingly, and with a complete lack of comprehension.

 

"So he's going to be traveling the world, probably meeting all sorts of benders. Who I need to meet, because I'm the Avatar, and I have to learn somehow."

 

Katara's face was doing a thing that the monks' sometimes did, when they really hoped Aang's story wasn't going where they thought it was going.

 

"So I could either fly around on Appa being _super obvious_ about finding teachers. Or."

 

Sokka's face clicked from _total incomprehension_ to _world-shattering excitement._ "Or you could hitch a ride with the prince of the Fire Nation, learning behind his back, making him a complete sucker!"

 

"This… isn't a good idea," Katara said

 

"It's brilliant!" her brother said. " _Completely suicidal,_ but brilliant!"  

 

"If he finds out, you're going to be in a lot of danger," Katara said. 

 

"He's really good at not seeing the obvious," Aang said. "I think he practices. Also... he's really not that bad. He shouts a lot, but most of what he sets on fire is himself."

 

This didn't seem to relieve Katara of her concerns. 

 

"I wish you the best of luck," Sokka said. "Hey, can we borrow your bison to get back home? We're kind of stranded here."

 

"We can't let you do this alone," Katara said.

 

"Uh," Sokka said. 

 

"What?" Aang blinked.

 

"We're coming with you. That's what friends do, Aang." She was smiling at him, and it was like the sun breaking free from clouds and birds singing and the first time he flew. 

 

And sure she'd said 'friend', but she'd be coming with him, so he could work on that!

 

"Seriously," her brother said. "This is a terrible idea. Genius, but terrible."

 

"Do you want to borrow Appa to go home?" Aang offered, sweetly.

 

Katara's brother opened his mouth. Then closed it. Then gave Aang a _very suspicious look._ "Nope. I think I'll be coming along. You know, to _supervise."_

 

Aang could work on that, too. 

 

%%%

 

The bison crashed onto the deck about five minutes after Zuko got back. Had they been _waiting?_ And if they had, why hadn't they _offered him a ride?_ Not that he'd needed one, but it was _an actual flying bison_ and Uncle was getting too old to be climbing up and down cliffsides.

 

"Nephew," Uncle said, "you are underestimating me with your eyeballs again."

 

"I am not! And there are more important things to focus on, Uncle!" He gestured with both hands to the bison. The bison that had crashed on the deck, with a surplus of children on board. And why was Helmsman Kyo _waving at them?_ "Stop that!"

 

The Helmsman _eeped,_ and retreated a few steps.

 

Two children in blue and one in yellow slid onto his deck. Zuko stomped over to them—Agni, he'd missed having steel under him, it was _so satisfying_ to stomp—and glared.

 

"Thank you for delivering my prisoner, Water Tribe. You may go now." He was completely confused as to why they _would,_ he'd given them _ample time_ to escape, but… he also had no idea why else they'd be here.

 

"Well, that's that," the boy said. "He turned us down, no way to change his mind—"

 

" _Sokka,"_ the girl said, crossing her arms.   

 

"Great news!" the little monk said. Which… filled Zuko with the immediate desire to clap a hand over the kid's mouth before he could say _anything else._ He didn't. This proved to be a mistake. "Katara and Sokka are coming with us! Also Appa."

 

The bison padded around in a deck-denting circle, then fwumphed down in the sun like a bear-dog. 

 

"No. They're not," Zuko said. "...Maybe the bison." It was an _actual flying bison._  

 

"Oh," the monk said, twiddling his thumbs and ducking his head. "Well, that's too bad. I mean, they would have been really helpful on your Avatar quest…"

 

Zuko had been tricked enough in his life to know when he was about to fall for something again. It was just a feeling he had, a sinking in his stomach. It didn't help that the monk was ducking his head _to hide a grin._ "...Explain."

 

"The Avatar is Water Tribe, right? So you'll need to know about Water Tribe culture. And Katara is a waterbender, so you could train with her. To prepare for when you fight the Avatar. And their Gran-Gran is _super old,_ I bet she told them _all kinds_ of spirit stories."

 

"This is true," Sokka confirmed. "But we've definitely forgotten all of them, so no hard feelings if you turn us down."

 

Zuko scowled at the peasant. And the airbender. The waterbender scowled at _him._ The bison remained indifferent. 

 

"Plus, if you're going to look for the Avatar in the Water Tribes, wouldn't it be helpful to have actual Water Tribe members to guide you? They could help you get in, and vouch for you so you don't have to threaten any more villages."

 

"Aang, we can't vouch for him," the waterbender said. "He _assaulted_ Gran-Gran."

 

"See? The Water Tribes are fiercely protective. So once you earn their trust, they'll be perfect allies!" 

 

The peasants looked extremely skeptical. Zuko shared the expression. "Even _if_ I agreed, the waterbender is the only one of use. What does the other one have to offer?"

 

The airbender shrugged. "He's part of the package?"

 

"I am _not_ 'the other one'!" the peasant protested. "I've taken you out _twice_ with boomerang!"  

 

Boomerang was going to disappear into the _ocean_ if the teen kept waving it around. 

 

"Come on, Zuko," the monk wheedled. "How else are you going to catch the Avatar? Err, I mean, 'Come on, Commander Prince Zuko Sir, how else—'"

 

"You can't just keep repeating 'Avatar' and expect me to care," Zuko snapped. 

 

The monk gave up his hesitant act, and _grinned._ "Avatar Avatar Avatar—" 

 

It should not have been a convincing argument. 

 

"Fine!" Zuko threw up his hands. "But you're helping me train, and you're telling me _everything you know._ Both of you. Other One, you're on bison clean up detail."

 

"I'm what?"

 

The bison cracked an eye. And stood. And demonstrated on the deck, as if he'd been waiting for days to prove a point to the annoying boy who'd jerked at his reins one too many times, and hadn't even believed he could fly.  

 

Helmsman Kyo handed the peasant a bucket and a mop. 

 

"Normally he flies off to do that," the airbender said, sounding a little puzzled. "Oh well. Once you're done cleaning, I'll show you to our cells!"

 

"Our _what?"_  


	4. They Didn't Know What They'd Expected. But.

There were  _ sounds _ on this ship. Sounds Sokka would never, ever get used to. Metallic creaks and groans, pinprick scrapes like claws over pipes, steady wet noises like something sucking and unsucking, hissing that could come from pipes or something far, far more sinister. 

 

"For the last time, Sokka. Go. To. Bed," his innocent little sister said, dragging a pillow over her own head. There were a lot of pillows in this hallway. Also blankets. They'd dragged all four of the mattresses out of the cells and raided the closet the crew had shown them down the hall. It was quite the comfortable snowfort, except made out of pillows and blankets. Like some kind of  _ pillowfort. _ It was enough raw comfiness to almost,  _ almost _ lure Sokka into a sense of complacency. 

 

Almost.

 

_ Never. _

 

"Are you  _ still _ awake?" Aang whispered, hours or days or minutes or seconds later, blinking blearily up at him in darkness lit only by the moon through the corridor's porthole. "You don't need to keep watch. There's soldiers on deck doing that already."

 

"That is not reassuring, Aang," Sokka pointed out, but the world's savior had already nodded off to sleep again. 

 

The moon rose above the porthole's circle, then sank back down. It glinted dully off the unnatural metal all around them, casting back the light in a way no  _ proper _ ship would. Metal wasn't even meant to float: even in this, the Fire Nation found a way to corrupt nature. Making their fleet out of material that would  _ rust _ in the water they spitefully launched it in, material that would be frigid in the cold of the seas they invaded and scorching in the volcanic heat of their own homeland. Nothing like the natural insulator of wood that was-once-alive and still had its soul, if carved by a Tribesman that knew what he was doing. These ships were dead from the start; red ore ripped from the flesh of the earth and beaten under fire to become  _ this _ unnatural thing of steel and rivets and  _ noise. _

 

The moonlight glinted. The moonlight glinted off of  _ eyes. _

 

The darkness above him writhed, and dropped.

 

Sokka screamed.

 

%%%

 

Zuko reached the prison hold first, which was  _ not _ a sign of his insomnia  _ shut up _ inner voice of Uncle. He didn't know what he expected—blood? Yeah. With that much screaming there should be a  _ lot _ of blood.

 

He did not expect to find the airbender _ cooing. _

 

"Kitty! Oh my gosh it's turning as red as your face—"

 

"IT IS CUTTING OFF MY AIRWAY AANG."

 

"Because you're scaring it! Look, its tentapaws constrict when you struggle! Just—"

 

"AAAAHHHH!"

 

"—let me—"

 

"If it was cutting off your airway you wouldn't be so  _ loud," _ the waterbender mumbled, pressing a pillow down over her face. "You have been waking us up  _ all night _ for  _ every little thing—" _

 

"AAAAAAAAAAAAHH!" 

 

The guards on duty caught up behind him. They, like Zuko, took a moment to look around for something threatening. 

 

"...I was expecting more blood," Assistant-to-the-Doctor-and-Occasional-Pikewoman Satomi muttered, relaxing the grip on her spear. Next to her, their newest crewman very distinctly did  _ not _ relax. Or take his eyes off the kids down the hall for more than brief moments as he kept looking for a threat that was clearly not here. "Kazuto, bank your fire. It's literally just the cat." 

 

"Back to your stations," Zuko ordered. And pinched the bridge of his nose. He took in a deep breath, as Satomi dragged the new guy back up the stairs. 

 

"Don't  _ hit _ it, Sokka!" the monk shouted.

 

_ Snap. _ It wasn't an audible noise. More of a mental one.

 

"You hit that cat again and you're hitting the  _ water, _ Other One!" He stomped over, which was loud and satisfying right up until he was stomping on  _ pillows.  _ Where had they gotten so many more—?

 

Ugh, he needed to have  _ another _ talk with the quartermaster. Or maybe he could just give up, and declare  _ this _ the linen closet. Let the crew fight with feral peasants everytime they wanted new sheets.

 

"Come on, Sushi. It's okay, get off the stupid savage's face, you don't know where he's been," Zuko rubbed behind her ears, and tickled under her suckers, and soon had an armful of shivering cat-tentacles clinging to his wrist and mewing for comfort. He kept petting her, and glared down at the also-shivering Water Tribesman. "What is your  _ problem?" _

 

"Tentacle monstrosity. Eyes on the ceiling and dropping, dropping down, iä, iä, catopus fhtagn—"

 

"Uggh," the sister said, dragging another pillow over. "This is like the time you thought the otter-penguins were surrounding you."

 

The tribesman shook himself out of his gibbering long enough to be indignant. "They were!"

 

"Because you were carrying  _ fish, _ Sokka."

 

"Because of the  _ smell of fresh death carried by one still living, _ Katara."

 

" _ Go to sleep." _

 

Meanwhile, the monk was scooting into Zuko's personal space. "Can I pet it?"  

 

" _ Her," _ Zuko snapped. "And your  _ friend _ just scared her. Does she look like she wants to be petted?" 

 

"Uh, yes? I mean, you're petting her  _ right now—" _

 

Zuko glared at the monk, and pointedly stopped petting the catopus. Sushi snagged his retreating hand with one tentapaw and dragged it back to that spot under her chin she really liked, the one right below her teeth-beak. Zuko continued glaring, but also resumed the petting. It wasn't  _ her _ fault. 

 

"Come on, airbender. We're going to train."

 

" _ What? _ The sun isn't even up!" 

 

"Yeah, but  _ we _ are. Thanks, Other One." Nevermind that Zuko had already been awake. Trying to go back to sleep was even more pointless this close to sunrise, so now that his maybe-prisoners were up he might as well do something more productive than searching for pictures in his ceiling's soot spots. "You too, Waterbender."

 

" _ Ugh," _ she said. " _ Thanks, _ Other One."

 

"I am the victim here!"

 

She dragged her still-protesting brother out of bed with her, which saved Zuko the effort. He gave her a quick approving nod. She gave him a bleary-eyed glare. Zuko turned his head away, and kept petting the purring catopus who had tentacle-manacled both his wrists. That was just a thing cats did; he didn't know  _ why _ the peasant boy got an eye twitch just looking at it.

 

They dropped Other One off to work in the kitchen. Assistant Cook Dekku took one appraising look at him, and set him to watching the rice. Which was about as far as he could be put from actual responsibility, and from anything sharper than a wooden spoon.

 

"I'm not helping to feed the Fire Nation!" 

 

"Guess you're not eating, then," Dekku deadpanned, reaching for the teen's spoon.

 

"...I retract my earlier complaint. But can't I do something more manly? This is women's work!" the teen protested. Once.

 

Dekku and the other male kitchen workers were not amused. Neither were any of the off-duty female marines. 

 

The waterbender looked on with a vindicated expression as her brother was forced into an apron. Zuko supposed that was an appropriate reaction to finding herself among civilized people. 

 

%%%

 

"Is this your first time outside your village?" the Fire Prince asked her. Katara wasn't sure what surprised her more: that he'd asked something  _ without _ scowling at her, or that he was keeping a completely straight face with that furry tentacle thing still purring around his hands. 

 

"Yes," she answered.

 

"Thought so," he said, shaking one of his wrists free, with the disturbing sound of suckers un-sucking.

 

"What does that mean?" She narrowed her eyes. And crossed her arms, for good measure.

 

He blinked down at her. Stupid  _ tall _ prince. Stupid tall  _ morning person  _ prince. "Uh. Nothing? It just shows."

 

"Does it." She started tapping a finger on her arm. 

 

"Are you  _ sure _ I can't pet her?" Aang asked. 

 

The prince looked relieved at the excuse to turn away from her. " _ No. _ We're training. Go do your warmups, or something. I'm starting with the waterbender."

 

"Wait, so I could have slept in?"

 

Katara joined her glare with the prince's. Aang's shoulders jumped to his ears. He held up both hands, and retreated to the railing. 

 

That left them alone in the center of the deck. Just her, and the Prince of the Fire Nation. 

 

He was frowning down at her. That seemed to be his default expression: both the frowning, and the looking down on people. "Do you need a barrel of water, or can you call from the ocean if you need more than what's in your waterskin?" 

 

"I..." Now would be the time to tell him she didn't know. Because she'd never sparred before, with waterskin or barrel or ocean. Or ever. 

 

"Well?" he snapped.

 

"This is fine," she snapped back. He was just one bender, and he was barely older than her, and they were  _ surrounded by water. _ She'd cracked a whole iceberg open on accident; she could take one scowly enemy teenager. 

 

Maybe. 

 

Probably not, but it was just a spar anyway, and she just… needed to do her best. 

 

Yeah.

 

"Ready?" he asked, settling into some kind of stance.

 

"Uh… are  _ you?" _ She pointedly stared at his wrist.

 

He flushed as red as his shirt, and straightened back up. The tentacle-thing squiggled as he reached a hand into its mass, turning a dizzying array of colors right up until he… scruffed it. Then it turned into a limp collection of calico-spotted tentacles dangling from his hand, mewing.

 

"Wait, that's a  _ cat?" _

 

He found a way to scowl harder. It was kind of impressive, actually. "What did you think it was?"

 

_ Some kind of horrible miniature Fire Nation attack-beast. _ "I've just… never seen that breed before."

 

"You wouldn't have; they're tropical." He held the cat out to the side and waited, like he expected some kind of cat-valet to come pick it up— 

 

"Yay!" Aang rushed forward, and wrapped the cat up in a hug. The cat's arms squiggled all around the airbender's, doing everything  _ except _ hugging back. It looked a lot like it was trying to crawl away, actually. Katara felt… a little bad for it. Now that she knew it was just a poor sweet kitty. A poor, sweet,  _ squishy _ kitty. As Aang was demonstrating. 

 

Zuko scowled  _ even harder. _ How much more  _ could  _ he scowl? "Keep her away from the fight."

 

"Yes Sir, Commander—"

 

" _ Don't _ finish that."

 

Aang's grin somehow got wider, too. "Yes Sir, Commander Prince Zuko Sir."  

 

Zuko reached  _ maximum scowl. _ He turned to Katara, and sunk into his stance again. It looked a lot more serious without the cat on his arm. Katara mirrored him as best she could, widening her stance and setting her feet like his, but it… didn't really feel right. But she didn't know what else to do. 

 

"Ready?" he asked.

 

"As I'll ever be," she said, and popped the cork on her waterskin.

 

And then the world was fire. Three fireballs, punched in quick succession, and she jerked out of their path on instinct more than anything else. She raised her hands, tried to raise her water with her, and it  _ came _ but then he was fireballing  _ again _ and the water splashed at her feet as she dodged. She tried to flick it at him, and it worked it worked, it shot away from her and turned to  _ ice _ but he stepped to the side and  _ kicked _ fire she didn't know you could  _ bend with your feet _ and she tried to dodge again but— 

 

"Yipe!"

 

She was on her back. He was looking down at her, and she'd been wrong before, because that hadn't been maximum scowl.  _ This  _ was. 

 

It took her a long, cold moment to realize she'd slipped on her own ice. 

 

"What," he growled, "was  _ that." _ He didn't even wait for her to answer, didn't even look down on her long enough to care what she said. He turned his back on her, in the middle of a fight, and she really wished she could make him regret that but he didn't even seem to  _ notice _ when she frosted over his boots. He just… stomped away from her. "Airbender! You said I could train with her!"

 

"You can!" Aang grinned, from between the tentacles flailing at his face. "I never said  _ she _ was trained."

 

"Why would you—" the prince let out a breath that sparked and steamed in the air. "I don't know why I expected anything different. Is lying cultural, or is this just you? Don't—don't answer that." He turned back to Katara, as she was getting back to her feet. "Waterbender. Have you trained with a master a single day in your  _ entire life?" _

 

"Well, no, but—"

 

He growled. Literally  _ growled. _

 

Katara's spine snapped straight. "We don't have any masters. You killed them all!" She threw her arms out to the side, and set her feet on the deck, and didn't even notice how the ice held her instead of betraying her again. "Or, or took them away, and they never came back, and… I'm learning as fast as I can but I have to teach myself  _ everything _ and I don't know any of the forms, why do you think I  _ wanted _ to get on your stupid ship and go to the north—" 

 

One of the guards on deck, the one who'd looked like he really would attack them when they landed on Appa yesterday, twitched. Violently. And Prince Zuko stared over her shoulder, his good eye wide. 

 

Katara turned around. The wave kept towering over the deck just long enough for her to think  _ Am I do—  _

 

And then it crashed down. On her, on Aang, on the guards, on the Fire Prince, on the cat that rode the water half-way across the deck. It shook itself dry, and turned the shimmer-gray of wet steel before Aang could find it again. The Fire Prince just… dripped. And stared at her.

 

He turned on his heel, without a word, and left.

 

"Wow," Aang said. "When he gets angry at  _ me, _ he usually shouts more."

 

"That wasn't angry," the female guard said. "That was way worse."

 

"Worse?" Katara asked.

 

"That was his  _ determined  _ face," she said, and every crew member in hearing range shuddered. Except for the twitchy one. He just held his spear to his chest with both hands, and looked slightly alarmed. "You might want to go get breakfast, and dry off. He'll be awhile, but he  _ will _ find you."

 

%%%

 

"I slaved over this rice  _ all morning, _ Katara," her brother said, handing her a filled bowl like he was bestowing a great treasure upon her. "You better have seconds!" 

 

"No, you better not," the towering assistant cook said. "We're at the end of a tour, we've got three unexpected mouths to feed, and someone's been breaking into the food stores. No seconds."

 

"But," Sokka said. "My rice." 

 

"Someone's been stealing food?" Aang asked. "Who?"

 

The medium-sized mountain stared down at him. And her. And also her brother. "Haven't caught them yet, or they wouldn't be stealing. But it started yesterday."

 

The staring was increasing in intensity, both from the assistant cook and the rest of the crew. Who were in line behind Katara and Aang, waiting to get their own soup-and-rice breakfast. 

 

"Oh, uh… it wasn't me?"

 

The cook slopped soup in his bowl, never breaking eye contact. Katara grabbed his elbow, and edged towards the emptiest table. The only other person there was a really short woman with fantastic bedhead, nursing a pot of tea. Which seemed… safe enough.

 

Except that the entire room had just gone morbidly silent. 

 

...Katara steered Aang past that table, to the  _ second _ emptiest, and took a seat as the room started breathing again. She was pretty sure she caught money changing hands out of the corner of her eye.

 

She… didn't know what she'd expected, when she'd agreed to join Aang in coming aboard a Fire Nation ship. The same kind of ship that was still trapped in ice, rusting by her village; the same people who'd decimated hers for generations, who sailed south to a land they didn't want to settle and didn't know how to live in, for the sole purpose of  _ war. _ And these ones were no better, destroying the very ice her village rested on and terrorizing elders and children and kidnapping Aang. And they knew she was a waterbender, now. Even if Sokka hadn't been waking her up every five minutes, she wouldn't have slept well last night. It was only a matter of time until the crew turned on them, and she had to keep her guard up for Aang's sake, and—  

 

"Hi!" the Helmsman who'd crashed into her village on 'orders' said, scooting his tray a little closer to them. "How are you liking things? Did you sleep well? I mean probably not, what with the screaming and all, that kind of woke us  _ all _ up, but I hope before that you—oh hey you haven't met everyone! This is Crewman Teruko who doesn't get a rank and we're not allowed to talk about why and that's Genji he's our Hawker and also the rhino handler and bison-wrangler now too I guess and Dekku's serving soup and accusing you of theft and over there is Engineer Hanako and you made me five coppers by not sitting with her because I  _ said _ you'd be too smart to fall for the obvious trap but  _ Genji _ said—" 

 

A guy who'd been face-first on the table turned just enough to glower at them with one gold-brown eye. "They  _ would _ have sat with her if you all hadn't gone  _ creepy-silent." _

 

"Genji's a really sore loser but we like him anyway, and—" 

 

The woman—Teruko—reached out, and put a hand over the Helmsman's mouth. "Kyo. Too peppy. Just… bring it down." 

 

"You're not even a firebender," Hawker Genji groaned, not bothering to raise his head from the table. "How are you this  _ awake?" _

 

"Hanako let me have a cup of her tea and it is  _ crazy strong, _ I think she got into the General's special stash, and it is just  _ wow. _ Like wow in my head. I'm not sure what was in it but  _ wow." _ The Helmsman talked straight through Teruko's hand.

 

At her table, Engineer Hanako slugged back a teacup. And poured herself another. This did not have a visible effect on the short woman's state of wakefulness.

 

"Pretty sure the General's special stash is  _ calming _ tea," Teruko said.

 

"Wow my hands are shaking, guys, guys look at my  _ hands—" _

 

"...Just what I want to hear from next shift's helmsman," the Hawker said. 

 

Katara wasn't sure what she'd been expecting, but she was. Uh.  _ Concerned, _ for entirely different reasons than the ones she'd thought she would have. 

 

And Aang was  _ grinning _ at her. "I knew you'd like them. I was really scared at first too, but once they stopped trying to fireball me and stab me and chase me, it turned out they were really nice!"

 

"I am not awake enough for this," the Hawker muttered. "Speaking of. Do you mind if we gag your brother tonight? It wasn't just the screaming, it was… all night. The talking. Sounds  _ carry _ in metal ships, he realizes that, right?"

 

"...What kind of gag?" Katara asked.

 

"I could rig something up from a rhino muzzle—" 

 

_ "KATARA!" _ Sokka shouted. "Stop being corrupted by the Fire Nation! Don't make me take off this apron and come over there! ...Hey, no seconds!" Her brother slapped a marine's hand with a spoon. "I worked and worked for this rice, and you just ate it without even tasting it, didn't you? You should be  _ ashamed—" _

 

Hawker Genji was squinting at her brother, taking vague air-measurements between his hands. "I'd have to bring in the sides, but it could work."

 

"Or you could just shove it over him as-is," Helmsman Kyo said. "Like a hat of shame. His skull is  _ super _ rhino-muzzle-shaped, if you tilt your head."

 

Katara… couldn't help tilting her head, right along with the rest of the table. She ate her breakfast, feeling more than a little surreal as the discussion on brother-muzzles continued, at a level of technical detail she didn't know how to respond to.

 

Later, she would admit to not tasting the rice at all. But not to Sokka.

 

"Waterbender!"

 

They heard the prince coming long before he got there. Sound really  _ did _ carry in metal ships. 

 

"Waterbender!" he stomped through the mess hall doors.

 

" _ Attention on deck!" _ someone shouted. And then there were a  _ lot  _ of people suddenly standing  _ really stiffly, _ including Aang. He was the only one grinning, though. Katara hurried out of her own seat, trading  _ what the heck _ glances with Sokka. 

 

"At ease," the prince snapped. He stopped in front of Katara, and shoved a scroll at her chest. "Read this."

 

"Thanks," Katara said, "I  _ love _ having random things shoved at me during breakfast."

 

The prince's face was at one-quarter-scowl. "Just  _ read _ it, okay?"

 

She glared at him. He… shuffled his feet. She raised an eyebrow, and unrolled the scroll.

 

The  _ waterbending  _ scroll. 

 

With beautiful illustrations of things she'd never even  _ dreamed _ of trying, complex movements that must have been copied by someone watching a master— 

 

"Urk?" the prince said. Which is when she realized she'd grabbed the front of his shirt.

 

"Do you have more?"

 

"Y—"

 

" _ Show me." _

 

Engineer Hanako downed another cup of tea as Katara dragged the prince out the door. 

 

%%%

 

There was a girl. In his room. Destroying his organizational system. None of Uncle's proverbs covered this situation. 

 

"Don't— That doesn't go there! Stop—"  

 

"Why aren't these grouped by  _ bending type?" _ the peasant complained. She was elbow-deep in his wardrobe, carelessly shoving scrolls whichever way she wanted, plucking the waterbending ones out to shove under her  _ armpit, _ hundreds of gold worth of priceless documents painstakingly collected over three years of world travels getting  _ elbow-creased _ and how did he make her stop without tightening her grip and hurting them  _ more— _

 

"Because they're organized by age!" He tried to shove the wardrobe door shut, but she  _ body-checked it _ and kept rummaging. 

 

"That's  _ really _ inconvenient."

 

"Bending styles evolve over time, and it's important to know what forms were favored relative to the Avatar cycle because most Avatars show an inclination towards the style of their native element—"

 

"Can anyone  _ besides _ you make sense of this mess?" She wasn't even  _ listening. _

 

"I'm the only one who needs to!" He kept his hands carefully unclenched. Flame daggers and irreplaceable documents did  _ not _ mix.

 

"And why is your wardrobe full of  _ scrolls?" _

 

Because his scrolls needed more room than his clothes, but that was—

 

"Where did you even  _ get _ all of these?"

 

It was fashionable for the upper class to collect war trophies from areas they'd never set foot in, and it was fashionable to invite the Banished Prince to dine when he was in port to show him off like another trophy, and Uncle always reminded him how impolite it would be to spurn such connections and everyone knew he couldn't refuse the invitations without giving up even the  _ pretense _ of having allies (and they were the only times he got to eat food that even came  _ close _ to reminding him of palace meals) so he went and spent hours trying to avoid the whispers and the scorn and the pity-glances by casually assessing the security of the fancy manors he'd been invited into. And sometimes, a few months later, while the prince was docked at a port a few miles away in another town entirely, the Blue Spirit helped himself to their ill-gotten goods.

 

But all that was— "It's none of your concern!  _ Leave,  _ peasant!"

 

"You have an entire  _ wardrobe _ full of my  _ stolen cultural heritage, _ and it's none of my concern?"

 

Zuko wasn't sure when his life had gotten away from him. Sometime before the waterbender backed him out of his own room, and slammed the door in his face.

 

%%%

 

" _ Thank you," _ the watertribe boy said. "You know, I really feel like I put a lot of love into it, and it's so nice to have someone appreciate that. Now I'm not  _ supposed _ to give out seconds, but..." 

 

Iroh nodded along. It had been perfectly unremarkable rice, but a compliment here and there never hurt anything, particularly his waistline.

 

" _ Attention on deck!" _ For the third time that morning—Iroh's own quickly waved off entrance included—everyone at breakfast hurried to stand.

 

Iroh himself turned away from the still-preening teenager, and glanced at his nephew. Who looked… very strange. His first thought was to check the boy for injuries, but Zuko was moving well enough, and did not appreciate it when his old uncle doted on him in front of the crew. 

 

"Uncle!" He sounded half-strangled. 

 

Iroh tucked his hands up his sleeves so he really wouldn't pat the boy down in front of everyone, and surreptitiously scanned the floor for any drops of blood left in his nephew's wake. "Yes, Prince Zuko?"

 

"Uncle, there's a girl in my room and she  _ won't leave!" _

 

The crew had already been at the silence of attention. Now they descended into the silence of hoping Zuko would not notice they were silent. Iroh blinked. And stopped looking for injuries. 

 

"Ah," he said.

 

"That's it? Uncle!"

 

Iroh cleared his throat. "So she is in your bedroom. And she will not leave?"

 

" _ I just said that!" _

 

"I was simply confirming my grasp of the situation." Iroh nodded once. And grinned. "I believe this means you are doing it right, nephew. Be safe!"

 

"I… what?" his nephew turned a brilliant shade of red. It was a much healthier color on him. "Not like  _ that. _ She's studying!"

 

"Ah," Iroh stroked his beard, "I, too, used to study with young women in my bedroom…"

 

"No! I— She— You're useless! Why is everyone useless! STOP BEING SO USELESS!" He stomped off, looking significantly more lively than when he had entered. Iroh considered this an instance of uncleing well done. 

 

"That grump is not getting any of my love-rice," the watertribe boy said. "And  _ you _ can say goodbye to seconds, Mister Sweet Talker. That  _ studying girl _ is my  _ sister." _

 

Iroh's stomach regretted his life choices.

 

%%%

 

Zuko didn't know what he'd expected, taking so many foriegn peasants aboard his ship. But he certainly hadn't counted on them infesting his  _ room. _ This was… it was so much worse than the airbender being on the lookout tower. That was just where he went when he wanted to pretend no one knew where he was. But his room was his  _ room, _ he  _ slept _ there, and meditated there, and practiced with his swords there, and read his scrolls and what if she found his  _ plays—  _

 

Maybe if he got together some of the guards, they could bodily drag her out. But… all she was doing was over-enthusiastically  _ reading. _ It didn't seem like something he should sic guards on her for, but  _ she couldn't stay there. _ Maybe she would leave on her own? She hadn't finished breakfast, she had to get hungry eventually. Maybe… maybe he could lay a trail of seal jerky, or something. If it worked for feral bear-wolves it would work for waterbenders, right?

 

Why was Uncle's advice on women never  _ practical? _ Three years of proverbs on how to get a girl  _ in _ his room (which, for the record, had never included "entice her with your Avatar research, nephew"). Uncle had never said  _ anything _ about making them  _ leave.  _

 

"Sir?" a voice called from down the hall. 

 

Zuko spun, and glowered at Hawker Genji. " _ What." _

 

"Better to show you, sir." The Hawker beckoned. Zuko followed, with a scowl. "I was checking on the rhinos after breakfast, and…"

 

They went into the animal hold. Zuko immediately saw the problem. The large, gaping problem.

 

Where the bales of feed had been, a bison now slept. The wooden pen they'd put him in was in air-sliced shambles. 

 

"...How much hay was that?" Zuko asked.

 

"A week's worth. Sir."

 

The bison groaned, and rolled on its side. It scratched at its belly, with two of its too-many legs.

 

A week's worth of food. For four komodo-rhinos. In a  _ day. _ Zuko ran budget numbers in his head. He didn't know what he'd been expecting bringing an actual flying bison on board, but  _ bankrupcy _ hadn't been his first thought. 

 

He clearly hadn't been pessimistic enough. It was a lesson the world sought to reteach him, every time he thought he'd finally learned.

 

%%%

 

She'd kicked the Prince of the Fire Nation from his own room. She'd  _ kicked the Prince of the Fire Nation from his own room. _ And he'd… left. There hadn't even been any fire. So she clutched an armful of precious bending knowledge to her chest, and… stood in the middle of the room. Alone. 

 

It wasn't that impressive of a room. It was only a little smaller than the hut she'd shared with Gran-Gran and Sokka back home, but it had so much less  _ personality. _ There was a futon in one corner—which looked a lot like the one she'd slept on last night, actually. The sheets were crumpled to the side and the pillow had fallen to the floor. There was a wooden trunk at its foot that probably contained his clothes, because every  _ other _ shelf and cubby and closet seemed to be full of these scrolls. He had a low table with candles over there, and a desk there, and really tacky Fire Nation banners everywhere, but aside from a pair of swords hung up on one wall there were no real  _ decorations. _ Like he expected not to stay here long, even though Aang had said he'd been on this ship for almost three years already. 

 

Which was actually a little weird. Shouldn't the Prince of the Fire Nation be back home, learning prince-y things? 

 

Like, for example, how  _ not _ to get bullied out of his own room. She… still wasn't sure why that had worked. And she felt a little bad, for how easy it had been. 

 

And a little  _ terrified, _ for whatever he would do when he got over the shock.

 

She would just… grab a few more scrolls. Then she'd leave, and find a nice quiet place to read them. Somewhere that wasn't the big, empty expanse of the Prince of the Fire Nation's oddly undecorated room.

 

Huh, Zuko was  _ right _ about the changing styles. This scroll and this one and this one all depicted the same end move, but the motions to  _ get _ there looked really different. She spread them out side-by-side, using Zuko's candles as paperweights, and tried to see how they connected; what logic carried through all of them to produce the same result. If she could just  _ understand _ then… then she would  _ understand, _ she would know how generations of benders had been able to do what she'd been trying for her whole life to grasp, because someone had been the  _ first _ and it didn't matter if she didn't have a teacher if she could just… just…

 

"Katara?" 

 

She jumped. "Hi, Aang. How long have you been there?"

 

"Awhile?" he leaned over her shoulder. "Oh wow, these are really nice. Is that a Kuruk-period scroll? Monk Gyatso said that bending changes to reflect the times, and to understand the flow of history you only had to see the emphasis benders put on attack or defense, style or concision. In times of peace the moves could be like dances, but during wars—"

 

"Are you  _ still here?" _ the prince in the doorway didn't sound surprised. Just really, really angry. And Katara realized that the sun looked  _ way _ higher through the porthole than she remembered it being, and she hurried to scoop up the scrolls that had somehow been forgotten in a tumbled pile on the floor— 

 

"Hi Zuko!" Aang air-wooshed, and was suddenly  _ right next to  _ the prince. 

 

Zuko put a hand on Aang's forehead, and pushed him a step further away. "Airbender. I see you are  _ also _ in my room." 

 

"I am! I was looking for Katara, she'd been gone a really long time and Sokka was kind of worried but also concentrating  _ really hard _ on boiling eggs—which I guess is more difficult than it looks?—so I offered to check on her. But I was looking for you, too!"

 

The prince took a step into the room. And turned. And pushed Aang another step, but this time towards the door. "That's nice. Waterbender,  _ leave." _

 

"See it looks like we're going to pass  _ really close _ to Kyoshi, and I was wondering if we could stop to ride the elephant-koi—"

 

The prince  _ shoved _ Aang. "Are you trying to get my entire crew killed?"

 

"I know elephant-koi look scary, but there's a trick to—"

 

"Firebenders  _ disappear _ on Kyoshi!"

 

"What?"

 

The prince scowled. And then… smirked. "We never got a chance to  _ train _ this morning."

 

"Uh. I had a really big breakfast, I think I should probably wait awhile before—" 

 

"Start running, airbender. Believe me,  _ I'll catch up." _

 

Aang ran. The resulting airblast had Katara scrambling for the dozen scrolls he'd sent flying. When she looked up, the prince was glowering down at her. 

 

"You better not be here when I get back, waterbender." He stomped off. 

 

Then there were… a lot of yelps, from above her. And fiery wooshes. And thumps. And equally fiery cursing. And the distinct sounds of a twelve-year-old laughing  _ way _ too cheerfully after all those other noises. Sound really,  _ really _ traveled on this ship. Katara shook her head, and kept gathering up her scrolls. They'd be busy for awhile, right? She would just… take a few more minutes. 

 

"Would you like some tea?" somebody or another said, the nice old guy that had been with Zuko at the temple, but she'd just found a  _ really advanced _ scroll and apparently there were all kinds of katas that made ice move as freely as water, and people who could  _ stop rain in place, _ and… and the tea ended up by her elbow as the door was closed behind her with a quiet chuckle. 

 

"You're  _ still here?" _ A very—wow, a very  _ sweaty, _ shirtless prince growled. He was unnaturally pale compared to the healthy brown of the Water Tribe. Like a dead fish. Like a dead fish that had more muscles than Katara knew a stomach  _ could _ have. These were very conflicting impressions, and she wasn't quite sure what to do with them, except to make a sort of strangled-otter-penguin noise in his general direction and wish that the first non-familial shirtless boy she'd seen had  _ not _ been the Fire Prince, both because he was the  _ enemy _ and because he'd just imprinted her mind with  _ unreasonable standards for male fitness. _

 

He stomped over to the wooden chest, dug out fresh clothes, and stomped back to the door. Stomping seemed to be his primary method of movement. " _ Leave, _ waterbender."

 

"I'll let  _ waterbender _ know, if I see her," Katara said.

 

The prince scowled. And stomped. And slammed the door so hard it bounced back open. 

 

At least there was nothing attractive  _ there. _

 

...Five more minutes. If only she had some water; she could almost  _ feel _ this move under her skin, waiting to be tried. It was the most basic one she'd found—wait, was this the scroll the prince had first given her?—but she thought she understood it now. Her waterskin was still empty from that morning, though, and she didn't know where to find—

 

The teapot sat next to her elbow. It had cooled a long time ago. Now it was just… leafy water. She propped the scroll up, and went to a particularly empty corner of the room, somewhere she wouldn't get all her precious scrolls wet if she messed up. 

 

When the prince came back, he'd put on a clean shirt and largely ditched the scowl. He was toweling his hair dry. 

 

"Really?" he sighed. But showers apparently mellowed him out, because he didn't even bother to shout at her. He just went to his desk, sat down, and pulled a really nice comb out of one of the drawers. The haircare routine that followed might have been distracting, if Sokka wasn't just as ridiculous about his. Which… made her realize how close their styles were. Really, the only difference was that Zuko shaved all the way down to the scalp while Sokka left the artic-peach fuzz on the sides. "Is there a reason you're staring, waterbender?"

 

The scowl was back.

 

_ You and my brother should trade haircare notes, _ Katara thought. "Nope," she said, and studiously returned to studying. She should… probably feel more nervous, being alone with the prince of the enemy nation. In his  _ bedroom. _

 

But she was starting to see what Aang meant, with this not-as-big-a-jerk-as-he-could-be business. He'd been yelling at her all day, but the only time he'd turned a flame on her was in their spar. 

 

And… he'd left the door open. And both Aang and his own uncle were, apparently, prone to dropping by unannounced. She could leave. She probably  _ should. _ But she was pretty sure he'd close the door then, and she wouldn't see him again until the next time he wanted something from her. 

 

"Is there a  _ reason _ you're turning my room into occupied territory, waterbender?" he asked, finally setting down his comb. 

 

_ Because you were the only kid on this ship for three years, and your room doesn't feel lived in, and you're really good at pushing people away but really bad at making them leave. _

 

"The cells are too dark to practice in," she said.

 

He pointedly picked up a little oil lamp from his desk and set it down loudly on the floor. And gave it a  _ toe-nudge _ towards her; did he  _ practice _ at being insulting? 

 

"They're too narrow, too," she said. "And I don't want to soak our beds on accident."

 

"But soaking mine is fine?" His hair was  _ steaming _ between his hands. Was he firebending it dry? With heat, but no flames. Could she do that? Just use cold, without forming ice? Or use waterbending to dry things, for that matter. That would be incredibly practical, not to mention life-saving—how many people could be rescued if waterbenders pulled them out of artic waters as soon as the ice broke under them? Dried them, with some motion of the hands? Could she even pull water straight from lungs, so they could breathe again? 

 

"Waterbender," he said, snapping his fingers to get her attention like she was a polar-bear dog. "Go practice on deck. Get out of my room."

 

She  _ could _ leave. She probably should. Be  _ he  _ could and should ask her politely and  _ use her name.  _

 

"Oh," Katara said, sweetly, "so you don't mind if the wind blows your scrolls right into the ocean?

 

He actually winced at that, before he could hide it with another scowl. He grabbed his comb, and started brushing his hair  _ again. _ It was distractingly soft-looking now that it was dry. What did he  _ use _ in it, and would he share? "Go grab Other One. He can hold scrolls for you."

 

"I would, but apparently he's concentrating  _ really hard _ on boiling eggs." She'd meant that sarcasm for Zuko, but… well, it applied equally well to her brother.

 

He raised one eyebrow. And… she felt a little horrible, for only realizing now that he only  _ had _ one eyebrow to raise. "That's literally just watching water boil, isn't it?"

 

"Do  _ you _ need to learn how to boil eggs?" She also raised an eyebrow. And tried not to feel too self-conscious about it. 

 

He smirked. "I'm a prince. I have people for that."

 

"Wait. Was that a joke?"

 

The smirk died. " _ No. _ Go away."

 

Whatever his Uncle had been teaching him these three years, 'social skills' hadn't been on the top of the list. Katara crossed her arms, and kept her eyebrow up. "Tell me a better place to train, and I will. After all, if I don't improve, how will you ever practice for catching the  _ Avatar." _

 

She'd said the magic word. Now he was thinking about it; she could actually  _ see _ him thinking about it. He got this little crease on his forehead, and he started tying his hair back up with a red ribbon—of  _ course _ it was red—but spent way too long fussing to get it right, and finally raised his chin and crossed his arms and tried to pretend like he was in control of this situation.

 

"You may stay," he benevolently allowed. "But as soon as you've got the hang of that one, you're practicing  _ outside. _ Now be quiet, I have work to do."

 

"Yes, Your Highness." She bowed, and hoped he realized that the Water Tribe  _ didn't _ bow. 

 

Her? Be quiet? She hadn't been the one growling all day.

 

%%%

 

...Zuko hadn't been aware that the Water Tribe bowed. Which meant either the peasant was attempting to learn manners, or actively mocking him. He pinched the bridge of his nose, and wondered when this had become his life.

 

Yesterday. The answer was 'yesterday.'

 

He could still kick the Water Tribe children off his ship. All three of them, maybe, before the rest of the fleet saw that he had found an  _ airbender. _ And the last Southern waterbender, apparently. He could just... shove them all back on their bison, and point them towards the South Pole, and yell at the crew to forget this had ever happened.

 

Except that the crew would sell him out at the first port, just like they always did. Hopefully they were getting paid in more than free drinks, but he didn't think it was the  _ savvy _ types that ended up on the  _ Wani, _ as a general rule. 

 

Even if he did kick the kids off, they would need  _ supplies. _ Supplies he didn't have to spare. The  _ Wani _ was already on course for the nearest friendly port, and he  _ sincerely hoped _ they wouldn't have to go on rations before reaching it. It was only a few more days, but they'd already been stretched thin  _ before _ the Water Tribe boy had decided he'd starve to death without  _ breaking into the food crates. _

 

It had to be him—the airbender hadn't touched the supplies in all the days he'd been on board, the waterbender had been  _ in his room _ all day, and another crate had been found emptied just after the Water Tribe boy's very vocal  _ this isn't a Fire Nation labor camp and I demand rights _ break from the kitchen. Which he'd spent wandering the ship, thieving and making abstract art, if Crewman Teruko was to be believed. She'd thought the boy was making technical diagrams, but there had been nothing recognizable in the scribbles she'd confiscated. So she'd… given them back. 

 

Zuko would have to make sure the crew watched him more closely. Kept him busier. And if the idiot kept this up, he was  _ off _ at the next port, whether or not the airbender or his sister went with him. 

 

Until then… Zuko had to go through the ledgers, and find the money for their next mission. More money, because actual flying bisons ate food in proportion to their near-mythological status. 

 

It would be easier to  _ think _ if the waterbender would stop  _ splashing. _ And getting all growly when she splashed. At least accidents with water caused less collateral damage than fire. 

 

"Could you stop growling?" she growled. "I can't concentrate."

 

_ "Me?"   _ he growled right back. 

 

"No, the  _ other _ prince."

 

"...Uncle Iroh?" he asked. And immediately afterwards realized that she was being  _ sarcastic, _ that had been sarcasm, could he please just curl up and die now. Preferably somewhere she couldn't see him. "Shut up!" he retorted. With exactly as much intelligence as he felt. Maybe if he lit something on fire she would  _ leave. _ (But so many of his scrolls were in the line of fire.)

 

She blew a strand of hair out of her face. "So what are you doing, anyway?" 

 

"...I'm trying to figure out how to afford feeding a flying bison."

 

"Aren't you the Fire Lord's son?" 

 

"My father expects me to maintain a reasonable budget," Zuko said, stiffly. 

 

She  _ laughed, _ and he stiffened  _ more. _ "You'd better budget in Sokka, too. He's almost as bad." 

 

Oh. She… hadn't been laughing at him. That was a weird feeling, to be honest. 

 

"What?" she snapped. "You're  _ staring." _

 

"It's more of a wrist flick," he blurted. "The move you're trying. I think it's... more of a wrist flick. At the end."

 

She looked confused for a moment. Then she looked down at her hand, and back up at him. "How do you know?"

 

He raised his chin and met her skeptical stare with a scowl. "The Avatar is master of all four elements. If I'm going to beat him, I need to be familiar with all the bending styles. Do you really think I haven't studied my own scrolls?" 

 

"...Can you show me?"

 

%%%

 

Sokka was mildly insulted that his technical diagrams had been given back to him. The confiscation, that part had made sense, and he had been filled with the righteous pride of indignation. And then the marine lady had blinked at his 2D Road Map to Future Sabotage, and  _ handed it back to him. _

 

"You shouldn't be here," she'd said, and shepherded him back to the kitchens like he was a lost penguin-otter. A lost penguin-otter with a possible concussion, or maybe it had just been born that way. 

 

This was, of course, a challenge. A challenge to  _ map their entire ship, _ and take detailed schematics of all their critical systems, and if they couldn't recognize his genius when they were literally staring at it and rotating it ninety degrees to the side and tilting their heads then it was a  _ victory for the Water Tribe.  _

 

"...Is it a mimic-catopus?" Aang asked. Aang asked from over his shoulder. Aang asked from over his shoulder after  _ coming out of nowhere. _

 

"Gah! ...No, it is  _ not _ a Fire Nation ceiling monster. It's… it's a  _ secret." _

 

"I like secrets," the airbender said. 

 

Sokka narrowed his eyes. "But can you  _ keep _ them?"

 

"Uh… yeah?" He pointed. To his head-arrow. And then sort of did an all-encompassing hand-swirl to indicate that he was  _ the Avatar _ currently roaming freely aboard a  _ Fire Navy ship. _

 

"Point," Sokka acknowledged. And looked both ways down the corridor. And leaned in close. "I'm trying to find their engine-thingie. So I can learn their evil Fire Nation ways. This ship has  _ no sails, _ but it moves."

 

"Ooooh," Aang said. "Engineering's that way. There's a sign on the door, you can't miss it!"

 

He pointed. It was very anticlimactic, as pointings went. And a little mystery-ruining. 

 

"...Thanks, Aang."

 

"No problem. Uh, be careful, you don't want to upset Hana—"

 

"Sssh," Sokka said. "No spoilers." 

 

He was not trapped on an enemy death ship to  _ cook rice  _ and  _ boil eggs. _ He was here on a  _ dangerous intelligence gathering mission.  _

 

"Have fun?" Aang said. "I'm just going to go find earplugs—"

 

"Sssssh," Sokka said.

 

The monk sshed. Put a hand over his own mouth and everything, and backed off down the hall. 

 

Sokka didn't know what he'd been expecting when he'd gotten on this ship infested by literal monsters, two-legged and otherwise. But  _ the most stressfully boring day of his life _ hadn't been it. What was  _ with _ these people, who were  _ completely normal _ but-wearing-red? And just  _ waiting _ for the evil orders that would flip their evil switches to evil mode? Because that Helmsman guy was weirdly fun to talk to, but he'd also rammed Sokka's village with a  _ battlecruiser. _ And those soldier guys had just as much trouble waking up in the morning as Sokka did, and complained about not having seconds just as loudly as he would have had he not been the one beating their hands off his delicious rice with a spoon, but they were also the same faceless skull-mask soldiers that been okay with following Zuko's lead. And some of those guys were  _ girls, _ which he was still trying to process. Were they… more evil, because they were girls? Real women stayed home and cared for the village children, no one  _ expected _ them to fight, so any woman who  _ willingly _ left her own country to go a-killin' abroad must be… just broken in the head, or something. Inherently eviler-than-evil. 

 

He had a feeling he should never share that speculation with Katara. 

 

And  _ Zuko. _ Who was the literal spawn of the world's most evil man, but somehow had  _ no idea _ how to deal with Katara. Like, hilarious incompetence. Sisters were not that hard, and Sokka had no idea where Zuko had gotten the impression they were. Sometimes you just needed to shove a snowball down the back of her parka and run before she got you with a snow  _ boulder, _ and that was that. How hard could it be to get one fourteen-year-old out of his room? Those scrolls of his couldn't be  _ that _ entrancing. 

 

Also, the prince apparently didn't realize that the drain pipe from the shower room ran straight up to the sink in the kitchen. All that shower-shouting he'd done about girls not leaving his room? That majestic soapy-time monologuing? Not as private as he thought.

 

"Has… no one ever told him about this?" Sokka had asked.

 

"After the first time, it was already too late," one of his fellow kitchen workers confided, "Who was going to admit they'd  _ heard _ him? And it just got worse, every time. We're three years in. I'd rather join a suicide pact than tell him, at this point." 

 

"We hoped he'd figure it out on his own," added another. "Everyone  _ knows _ how much sound carries on this ship. But he just… keeps monologuing." 

 

"The quality's really gone up since he was thirteen," said a third. "You could tell when he started smuggling those play scripts on board. Not really sure why he  _ hides _ those, you can always tell when he's holding one behind an Avatar scroll..." 

 

That was the point were Sokka started to wonder if maybe  _ he _ should tell the guy. Just… air it out there. The second-hand embarrassment was  _ crippling. _ Especially when the crew's solution to the overheard monologuing was to shove a literal sock in the drain.

 

Which all brought things back around to the key point, which was that  _ this was an enemy ship _ and Sokka  _ wasn't _ going to forget that. He would infiltrate them and learn all their evil secrets, so he wouldn't forget that. Because with a blue or green paint job, it would be disturbingly easy to forget that. He would  _ not _ fall for the clever psychological machinations of the Fire Nation and their missed-his-calling-as-a-dramatic-play-lead prince. 

 

Sokka found the door to engineering. It was, indeed, clearly labeled. He looked left, he looked right. He darted inside, clever as an artic fox-hare diving into a hidden burrow.

 

The door creaked closed. The temperature rose  _ crazily, _ higher than the hottest summer he could ever remember. He could probably take off his coat  _ and _ his snow pants and maybe even his lined under-shirt and still be too hot. Here, truly, was the beating heart of the Fire Navy ship. 

 

Sokka slinked from one pipe to the next. There was an eerie red glow over everything, and deep shadows, and soot that smeared on his clothes like the black snow that had fallen on his village too many times. He clutched not his boomerang, nor his club, but a fiercer weapon yet: his charcoal, and a stack of paper he'd stolen from under from their very noses. Tricked them into giving him. ...Straight up asked Kyo to bring him, and the Helmsman had done so with Aang-like levels of naive cheer. His enemies' weakness was his strength, and he diligently diagrammed the flow of the pipes as he went. The inner workings of this foul machine did not yet make sense to him, but they would. Oh, they would.

 

The door creaked open again behind him. Sokka dove into a tangle of pipes, the space just wide enough for a cleverly slender Water Tribe teenager. 

 

It was Crewman Teruko, the Eviler-Than-Evil woman, She Who Stalked Him Through The Ship. "Hanako! Have you seen the Water Tribe idiot? He slipped me again."

 

"You mean you got bored and let him loose again," a grumbly also-female evil-status-confirmed voice called back, from deeper in, from closer to the source of the heat and ominously flickering light. "If he's in here, I'll kill him for you."

 

"Thanks, hon. Let me know if you need help hiding the body."

 

They both chuckled. Well, Teruko did; the grumbly lady had sort of a snort-laugh. The door creaked again, and thudded shut. Sokka shivered inside his pipe sanctuary,  _ completely unclear _ on whether they'd been joking. They'd been joking, right? 

 

...He was a brave Water Tribe warrior, his mind his weapon, also he had his literal weapons that no one had confiscated and honestly he was feeling really insulted over that, too. He did not fear death. He did not fear— 

 

Steam hissed above him. He jumped, and his head clanged off a pipe. Oww oww  _ oww. _ He crouched in his hiding spot, holding his breath as he strained his ears—had the grumbly lady heard? Was she even now sharpening her engineer-knives, or heating her magical fire? He rubbed the back of his head, wet with blood, which was a little weird because he didn't think he'd hit it  _ that _ hard— 

 

_ Drip, _ the pipe said.  _ Drip. Hiss. _

 

_ Growl. _

 

Sokka did not want to turn around, he did not want to look up. But he was a brave Water Tribe warrior. A brave, brave...

 

The darkness of the pipe-labyrinth glistened red. Blood-soaked tentacles reached for him—   

 

Sokka. Had never screamed so much in his life. He clatter-fell out of his hiding spot and scrambled backwards and hit something soft but unyielding. He looked up, and up. And then… back down again, by a lot. 

 

The shortest woman he'd ever seen scowled down at him. 

 

"What are you doing in engineering," she growled, "and what did you do to our  _ cat." _

 

The tentacle-beast squirmed free from the pipes and onto his  _ leg _ and Sokka  _ kicked. _ The short grumbly engineer lady drew in a sharp breath. 

 

And the world. 

 

The world erupted into  _ eardrum pain. _

 

%%%

 

Zuko re-adjusted his stance. Less sharply rooted and ready to strike, more… ready to  _ flow. _ The scowling was technically optional, but made him feel better. "This feels weird."

 

"This feels  _ right," _ the waterbender said, examining his stance, and adjusting her own next to him. 

 

"It's not that different from airbending," the monk said, somehow doing it better than either of them.

 

"Why are you even  _ here?" _ Zuko snapped.

 

"Moral support!" the kid grinned. "Also, I'm sure there's lots to learn from other bending styles, even if I'm  _ not _ the Avatar."

 

"Young Aang is quite right! I think this is a wonderful new hobby for you, Prince Zuko."

 

"It's not a hobby, it's  _ training," _ he growled. "And you've seen actual waterbenders, Uncle. You  _ could _ help."

 

Uncle barely even glanced up from his pai sho game. He was writing a whole  _ stack _ of game-letters to his old man friends. "Only Northern ones, I'm afraid. I would not wish to contaminate our Southern lady's budding style."

 

"This is based off a Northern scroll!" 

 

"Is that so? Well, in that case..." Uncle stood. And immediately winced, bending over and rubbing at his spine. "Oh, my back. If only I had listened to my caring nephew and not climbed up and down all of those stairs. Also that cliffside." The Dragon of the West had clearly missed his theatre calling. 

 

"Uncle."

 

"Besides," the old man straightened, with no trace of pain. "You are doing a fine job! You know those scrolls much better than I do, nephew. And I would not wish to come between you and  _ other _ things that might be budding..."

 

" _ Uncle." _

 

"Could we… try the next stance?" the waterbender asked. 

 

" _ Fine," _ he snapped. And tried not to get creeped out by how smooth the motions were, or how moving in sync with the waterbender and air nomad wasn't so different than practicing next to Uncle and the crew, except that  _ he _ was the one leading and they were looking to him to do this right and he wasn't a master, especially not a  _ waterbending _ master, he just had a lot of practice trying to read bending scrolls, but actually doing the moves felt  _ weird—  _

 

(But not that different from his dao forms.)

They finished the kata slowly. She pretty much had it, now. And he was going to ignore how easy the monk was making it look.

 

"Again," he said. "Faster this time. Try to… feel the water, or whatever it is you do."

 

They did it again. Faster. And the water from the mop-bucket followed her, lashing out into the air with a snap. Which was the point where she made some kind of high-pitched noise and  _ hugged him, _ why did these children keep  _ doing that, _ and oh Agni was he  _ actually  _ screaming or was that just in his head—

 

Or… coming up through the deck?

 

He and the waterbender both looked down. A heartbeat later, Engineer Hanako's  _ very distinctive _ voice started resonating throughout the ship. 

 

"Whoa," monk said. "I can actually feel the shouting through my feet."

 

"You," Zuko ordered, pointing at the first unfortunate crewman he caught trying to skulk away. "Go find out what set her off."

 

"...Yes, sir," Crewman Teruko said. "Permission to get earplugs first, sir?"

 

"Granted." Zuko felt bad for anyone caught below deck when that started. Sound  _ carried _ on this ship. He felt worse for whoever her target was, though whatever idiot  _ didn't  _ know to stay on the engineer's good side deserved what they got. 

 

Even if they were a literal idiot, he amended, as Teruko dragged a shivering Water Tribe boy onto the deck. In her other arm was a quivering mass of cat.  _ Bloody  _ cat. 

 

"What  _ happened," _ he and the waterbender said together, and even  _ stepped forward _ together, and he blamed the synchronized bending practice. He straightened up and crossed his arms, and let  _ her _ be the one to scoop up Sushi. The traitor cat didn't even care she was in a stranger's arms, she cuddled just the same. 

 

"Teruko," he snapped, "report."

 

"Idiot gave me the slip. Idiot slipped into engineering. Idiot learned a life lesson. Sir." Teruko's reports always left something to be desired. As he literally could not demote her further, he let it stand. 

 

"And Sushi?"

 

"It… doesn't seem to be  _ her _ blood, sir."

 

Everyone on deck took a moment to process that. The Water Tribe boy whimpered. "...Blood in  the darkness, the chittering of the pipes…"

 

"Sokka," the waterbender said, "stop being so  _ dramatic. _ This is just like when you thought the constellations were shifting so you'd get lost."

 

"They were!"

 

"They are in  _ fixed locations relative to each other, _ Sokka."

 

"Not when the  _ eons remember that the future is but a turning of the past,  _ Katara!"

 

" _ Ugggh," _ the waterbender said, and knelt down to gently splash-clean Sushi with the water from her bending bucket. The catopus squirmed, and slipped under the water. "Huh," she said, like cats  _ weren't _ fully submersible where she came from. A tentacle reached out and dragged her hand down; she went back to scrubbing. 

 

"How did he get away from you to begin with, Teruko?" Zuko asked, narrowing his eyes. 

 

"His wily Water Tribe ways, sir," she answered, with a completely straight face. Next to her, the idiot was staring into the depths of the bucket like it  _ had _ depths to stare into. Zuko pinched the bridge of his nose. 

 

"Perhaps if you want him watched, nephew," Uncle said, "you could do it yourself. You are the only one free right now."

 

"I'm not free, I'm training the waterbender! So she can help  _ me _ train against the Avatar!" As always, his Uncle failed to be impressed by Avatar-related arguments. "Maybe  _ you _ should teach him how to play pai sho." 

 

Uncle stroked his beard, and looked the peasant over with a critical eye. "Perhaps I will."

 

"Uh," the peasant said, "do  _ I _ get a say in this?"

 

No one bothered to reply to him. Teruko gave him a shove towards the pai sho table; the rest of them got back to… waterbending training. 

 

This was Zuko's life now. Apparently.

 

The monk got bored and started spectating the pai sho lesson, after barely an hour. The waterbender kept insisting they try  _ just one more move _ before they took a break. They never did take a break, not until Uncle set up a small dining table  _ in the middle of their training space _ and had dinner brought up.

 

"These eggs are amazing," the Water Tribe boy said. "It's okay, you can compliment the chef if you want to."

 

"I think it's more of a side twist," Katar—the  _ waterbender _ said, as they leaned over the scroll. "To keep the water's momentum going, from this stance to the next."

 

"No, but look at the feet," Zuko countered. "A twist would put you off balance. It's important to stay rooted—"

 

" _ I _ think the eggs are good, Sokka."

 

"...Thanks, Aang." 

 

The sun set. If anything, the waterbender got  _ more _ excited to train. Zuko… was okay with that. It was almost nice, having someone else on board who wanted to get better just as badly as he did. Zuko wouldn't keep  _ her _ from the advanced forms.

 

%%%

 

The night was dark and full of noises, and the gird of a pai sho board was still imprinted on the back of his eyes, and the click, click, click of tiles was in his ears—

 

_ Click, click, chitter, _ the darkness laughed.

 

Sokka. Did not sleep. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Zuko 100% practices monologuing. That speech to an unconscious Aang at the North Pole? Shouting into a lightning storm? This kid looks both ways to make sure no one's listening, then monologues his soul out. Love him so much.
> 
> I has Tumblr! There is a lot of quality people-writing-ficlets-for-my-stories stuff goin' on. Search the "ficlet" tag.


	5. Shopping Trip I

"I  _ told _ you, the twist puts you off balance."

 

"And I told  _ you, _ I have to keep the water's momentum up or it just  _ splashes everywhere." _

 

"It splashes everywhere when I  _ knock you over _ because you're  _ off balance. _ Do you need another demonstration, waterbender?" 

 

Iroh sipped his tea, drinking in the sound of his nephew making friends. Granted that Zuko had to semi-kidnap them first. It was an approach to the problem Iroh himself should have considered years ago; perhaps if he had found some war orphans in the colonies, and bribed them aboard with the promise of regular meals if they would simply not run when his nephew approached…

 

"When you get sick of hitting the deck, let me know. I'll show you  _ proper footwork.  _ Again."

 

"Your  _ footwork _ is too—too  _ And-Then-The-Fire-Nation-Attacked! _ I can't change directions like that! You try doing this while holding water. Where did that—here! Hold this."

 

"I am not holding your  _ water bucket." _

 

"Hold it and try to do one of your jumpy fire kick things."

 

"I could. If I wasn't holding your water bucket."

 

"Just  _ do it." _

 

Ah, but colony children would be much more differential towards their prince. They would not, for instance, set his nephew up to dump half a bucket of water on his shirt.

 

_ "I told you!  _ The twist keeps the water contained, otherwise it just… does that. I can't  _ do _ the jerky starting and stopping you do."

 

Zuko dripped with far more patience than Iroh was accustomed to. 

 

"Heh," the Water Tribe boy said. "She called your fire magic 'jerky'. You jerkbender."

 

Iroh sipped his tea, his ears losing a few more days off their useful life expectancy as his nephew returned to his usual volume. 

 

It had been a week since their prison hold had filled up with children. Which was, Iroh noted, not a phrase he had ever expected to think, much less with any fondness. Miss Katara was making quite remarkable progress on her bending, particularly her sparring. As sparring appeared to be both her and Zuko's preferred method of interaction, it was little wonder. 

 

"Lean back a little more, Katara. Let the water counterbalance you. Push and pull," the boy who was no longer claiming to be the Avatar said, having perfected this particular move on his second try. 

 

_ "I know push and pull, Aang,"  _ Miss Katara growled. She had been working on this particular move all week. 

 

"No, maybe he's right. Fire doesn't have weight to it, but water does. Maybe its like… like grabbing the edge of a wall, and spinning around. You're off balance, but—"

 

"—The wall holds your weight so—"

 

"Your center of gravity is shifted towards the middle, and—"

 

"That's what I said," the just-an-Air-Nomad complained, as he watched Zuko help the waterbender adjust her stance, with hands very close to her waist in case she should fall. The monk looked distinctly jealous that it was not  _ his _ hands by the waterbender's waist. Ah, young love. 

 

His nephew was proving very good at understanding the frustration that came with competing against a prodigy.

 

"I got it! I got it, I got it!"

 

_ "Get off of me." _

 

Less so at understanding the concept of physical affection. Or perhaps uncomplicated affection, in general.

 

"They have a betting game, you know," Sokka said, finally choosing his move. He placed the water lily tile in the eastern quadrant, ascendant of the fire lily, the opposite elements protecting his growing bid for territory in a way Iroh had not anticipated. If the young man had not taken ten minutes to do so, Iroh would have been impressed. "Most jerk-hugs in a day wins their pick of the pillows. Commander Prince Zuko Sir has to earn the hug first, though, or it would be like that day Aang just followed him around."

 

Iroh remembered that day. And the resulting fires. He moved the panda lily in opposition to fire and water, threatening a coup of the tribesman's own pieces. An ample distraction from the net he was forming on the outer edges of the board. "Are you participating in this hugging game, as well?"

 

"You are assuming I have a need for pillows," the boy smirked the smirk of the manically sleep-deprived. He would, perhaps, be picking up pai sho  _ even faster _ without the sunken pits of exhaustion growing under his eyes. Assistant Cook Dekku had stopped trusting him near the stoves two days ago, when he'd found the boy entranced by boiling water— _ so bubbly, life is but a short stride from the roiling of the primordial ooze that beckons our return. So, so bubbly. _ This had lead to much more time for pai sho.

 

"Aren't  _ you  _ going to try?" the waterbender asked.

 

"...What do you mean?" his nephew shifty-eyed.

 

"Zuko. You realize we can  _ see you  _ when you practice, right? Just adapt it like you did for the waterwall, and—"

 

"I was  _ alone." _

 

"Aang and I were up on the lookout—" 

 

_ "Airbender you said you would stay off my lookout tower." _

 

"I promised I wouldn't  _ live _ on your lookout tower," the child who was technically still too young to have even been told whether he  _ was _ the Avatar said.

 

"I don't get what the big deal is. Why  _ shouldn't  _ you practice new moves?"

 

"It's not proper bending! You wouldn't understand, you've never had a master, there are  _ rules, _ and  _ standards, _ and if you don't meet them then—then it's  _ bad _ and you're  _ wrong, _ okay?"

 

"Why?"

 

"Because that's the way it is! That's why I'm still on basics, because my style is all wrong and— _ get off of me, airbender!" _

 

"Nope," the young monk who was the subject of many of Iroh's new pai sho letters smirked.

 

"I moved," Sokka said, jarring Iroh from his thoughts. "And you didn't immediately make a mind-bogglingly complex countermove five strategy layers deep. Are you… okay?"

 

"My apologies," Iroh returned his attention to the board, and made a simple move a mere three strategy layers deep. If his outer net should fail to conquer the board entire, he would at least have the western and southern quadrants to fall back on. And perhaps the northern too, if the boy didn't realize what moves his creeping ivy had opened up two turns prior. He need only place the sunflower just so, but he was hoping Sokka would close that gap in his defenses before he got to tearing it wide open and making it bleed across the board. Iroh would generously allow him two additional turns for this noticing. Truly, closing his net would be more elegant. It was so rare to extend a game long enough to play out such an all-encompassing strategy.

 

"Hey.  _ Hey,"  _ Sokka said, and closed an incidental gap in his defenses that Iroh had not even considered. "Thought you could pull one over on me, did you?"

 

"I see you are too quick for this old man," Iroh replied.

 

"How are you on the  _ basics _ when you can beat three of your crewmen at once?" Miss Katara asked, crossing her arms.

 

"Because they're even worse than me," Zuko said, demonstrating his ability to be maximally insulting both to himself and others. Simultaneously. "Airbender, let go before I—"

 

"Ah-HA!" Sokka said, triumphantly placing the sky lily in its place, turning Iroh's panda lily to his own ends. The cascade of piece exchanges rippled over the board, flipping the daikon root and the chive tile and a seemingly random scattering of others until finally, at the very bottom edge, Sokka's humble dandelion flipped into Iroh's control. The net closed. Iroh sipped his tea while he waited for the tribesman to realize what had just happened. 

 

"...I just beat myself. Didn't I."

 

"You did have some small assistance," Iroh smiled. 

 

"And that's enough of that," the Water Tribe boy said, standing. "Hey, Commander Prince Zuko Sir! What scrolls do you have for  _ real _ weapons?"

 

"None," Zuko scowled. "I was preparing to fight the Avatar; I have  _ bending _ scrolls. And don't call me that."

 

"Avatar Kyoshi used weapons," the not-an-Avatar said. "And Avatar Yangchen would have known how to use a staff, everyone learns. And—"

 

Zuko shook himself out of the airbender's grasp, and stomped off.

 

"I'm always really unclear on whether he's coming back," Sokka said. 

 

"The trick is in the volume," Crewman Teruko replied, from her place nominally guarding the deck but mostly enjoying the show. "The louder he's shouting, the longer he'll be gone. I think he just went to get something."

 

Iroh reset the board. Miss Katara shrugged, and looked to Aang. The young monk hopped down off the deck rail, and eagerly took his place in the space Zuko had vacated. Together the two began to move through the kata she'd just perfected. The water in the bucket at her side rose, as did the ocean at the not-an-Avatar's side, and the waterbender dropped her arms and froze while the certainly-just-an-airbender gaped at what he had  _ definitely not just done in full view of the crew _ — 

 

Iroh spilled his tiles  _ all over _ and  _ very loudly, _ how unfortunate. He followed this up with many equally loud, laughing apologies, and perhaps accidentally bumped a few tiles to go rolling off for the deck guards to chase. 

 

When Zuko came stomping back with a scroll in his hand, the airbender and waterbender were leaning against the railing. Not-The-Avatar Aang was whistling. This was so far from inconspicuous that even Zuko paused a moment to glare suspiciously at them before finishing his stomp over to Sokka.

 

"Here." The scroll was thrust into the boy's chest, somewhat more gently than the action implied. This was likely for the scroll's sake more than the boy's.

 

"So you  _ do  _ have weapons scrolls," Sokka said. "And you lied about this, why?"

 

"I forgot," Zuko lied.

 

"Uh-huh," Sokka did not believe him. But he did unroll the scroll. "This is for  _ two  _ swords. Don't you have anything for one? Or for a club? Or for two clubs?"

 

"What part of  _ hunting the Avatar _ don't you understand?" Zuko said.

 

"The 'why you're doing it' part," Sokka said.

 

Prince Zuko ignored him. "Avatar Kyoshi used two fans. This was as close as I could find. If you don't want it— "

 

The tribesman curled protectively over the scroll. Behind him, the young monk and Miss Katara edged their way towards the door to the hold. Iroh could tell the exact moment they crossed from the blind spot of Zuko's scarred periphery into the center of his vision; he tensed, and scowled hard enough to cover for it. 

 

"Where are you going?"

 

"Our cells," Katara answered, with a bright smile.

 

"With your water bucket?"

 

"It's really breezy up here," young Aang said, his smile even brighter.

 

"You're an  _ airbender." _

 

"I figured I could practice finer movement control. In a, ah, smaller space," the waterbender's smile was, perhaps, frozen to her face. 

 

"Oh. Uh. Do you… want me to come with you?"

 

"No, no, we wouldn't want to impose upon your princely time," the girl might be giving herself a permanent smile-cramp.

 

Iroh could tell the exact moment his nephew realized his presence was not wanted, as well. The reaction was much the same as to someone approaching from his blind spot. 

 

"Fine!" he shouted. "It's about time I had the deck to myself. Go splash in your cell,  _ Waterbender." _

 

"I  _ will,"  _ she snapped. 

 

"Have fun throwing fireballs!" the monk said, with an earnest wave.

 

"I don't  _ have _ fun!"

 

Perhaps there was some merit in these semi-kidnapped friends. But there would be more in  _ real _ ones. Ones who were not already lying to him, and destined to leave him. Iroh only hoped that this 'Aang' was a match for Bumi's; he wished to get the boy and the Water Tribe siblings off the ship, before their leaving would hurt his nephew too much.

 

Sokka awkwardly reached out a hand, as if to pat Zuko's shoulder. He retracted it at the last moment; it was in Zuko's blind spot, and he never saw.

 

"Hey there. Buddy. You could, ah. You could hold my scroll for me, if you want."

 

Zuko was shouting very loudly when he left the deck. Iroh did not expect to see him again for some time. Not until they sighted the port, most likely.

 

%%%

 

Zhao's ship was at port. Because of course it was. 

 

"Does he ever actually  _ patrol?"  _ Zuko asked, lowering the spy glass. Behind him on the bridge, Lieutenant Jee didn't tend to reply verbally to his teenage commander; replying could lead to  _ conversations,  _ conversations to  _ fraternization,  _ fraternization to caring about the child commander he was watching grow up and thinking too hard about how and why the leader of their glorious nation came to banish his gravely injured thirteen year old son on a ship likely to sink with a crew whose records read like  _ future mutiny _ in an ocean full of enemy ships. 

 

Lieutenant Jee avoided non-course-related conversations with the younger prince whenever possible. But he shifted his weight, and his armor creaked sympathetically. 

 

The prince glared at him. "I thought I told you to  _ maintain your armor,  _ Lieutenant."

 

Which was what Jee got for even trying. "Yes, Sir." 

 

"Dock as far from Captain Zhao as possible. I need to go make sure some peasants know their place."

 

The prince stomped off. Jee refrained from creaking. 

 

%%%

 

Aang shifted through the stance, and gracefully returned the water to the bucket. The water Katara had spilled. For the third time. 

 

"See, you just need to keep your wrists steader, and move your ankles more—" 

 

"That," Katara smiled through gritted teeth, "is  _ exactly what I've been doing, Aang." _

 

_ "Peasants!"  _

 

Oh thank the spirits, someone she  _ could _ yell at and/or strangle. Aang hastily took a step back from the bucket, and clasped his hands behind his back, beaming a  _ still-not-the-Avatar  _ smile. Katara crossed her arms, and set her feet, and scowled. 

 

And made a mental note to have Sokka guard the stairs, the next time Aang was practicing bending down here. If Zuko had a single stealthy bone in his body, they could have been in real trouble. As it was, the shouting and stomping gave them more than enough time to prepare.

 

"Peasants! Where's Other One?" 

 

"Wasn't he on deck, training with you?" Katara asked. "Did you lose my brother?"

 

"I was not— Why would I know  _ anything  _ about swords, they're—they're for non-benders and screwups, and— and I'm not your brother's keeper, that's Crewman Teruko's job!"

 

"No offense, but she's not that  _ invested _ in it." 

 

Zuko shut his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, and exhaled slowly in a very clear  _ counting to ten before continuing this conversation way.  _ When he looked at them again, his volume could almost pass for normal people's volume. "We're almost at port. I order you to remain in your cells. ...Or their associated hallway.  _ Don't _ come up the steps, and  _ don't  _ talk to anyone."

 

Katara might have snapped something about them not  _ really  _ being his prisoners, and actually a look at this port (her second stop outside the home she'd never left before) sounded  _ lovely, _ but he interrupted her with a key. Shoved at her crossed arms. She caught it, on reflex. 

 

"The key to your cells," he said, before she could ask. "In case you need to lock yourselves in."

 

"Why would we…" her words trailed off as her brain caught up to the  _ million horrible scenarios  _ that she'd somehow forgotten over the past few days. She and Aang exchanged a look of mutual remembering-where-they-were. Because this was a Fire Navy ship and they were about to dock at a Fire Navy port full of Fire Nation citizens. People who'd sent a whole fleet south when they heard they might have missed a single waterbender. People who were pretty sure they'd gotten  _ all _ the airbenders. They weren't  _ safe _ here, and she didn't know when she'd forgotten that. 

 

The Fire Prince turned his head away from whatever look was on her face, and rubbed at the back of his neck. "It… it shouldn't be a problem. There were no admiralty flags in the harbor, so no one here outranks me, and they wouldn't want to get on Uncle's bad side. You're  _ my _ prisoners, they don't have any right to take you off the ship. But Uncle and I and Lieutenant Jee have to go deal with resupplying, and Zhao's in port, and I'm pretty sure he learned after the last time not to take things from my ship but he's an  _ asshole _ so he might try to pull rank  _ which he doesn't have—"  _

 

Katara could have probably gotten another hug in towards her Pillow Pick, but opted for an awkward pat on his arm, instead. "Thanks. Umm. For the warning? And for not turning us over at literally the first port we came to? I—I was really worried when we first came aboard, but you're…" She wanted to say  _ 'a surprisingly good person',  _ but had a feeling he'd take offense. What was a Fire Nation-y compliment? "...an honorable man. And a pretty good teacher."

 

And he could turn red as fast as a mimic-catopus on a Fire Nation flag,  _ wow.  _ The scowl did nothing but emphasize how bad he was at taking a compliment. 

 

"Just… just  _ stay here.  _ That's an order. I'll have Teruko bring your brother down when she finds him."

 

%%%

 

They had still not found Other One by the time the crew was tying up at dock. Zuko didn't know if this was because Teruko was that good at ignoring her orders, or the boy was that good at hiding. If he was breaking into the food stores again, Zuko hoped he  _ choked. _

 

This was the mood in which he disembarked, and waited for Zhao. Not that he actually  _ waited,  _ but he took three steps off the gangplank with Uncle and—

 

"Ah, Captain Zhao!" Uncle beamed, loudly warning him.

 

"It's  _ Commander  _ Zhao, now," the man smugged back, because of course he'd been promoted again. Of  _ course.  _ At this rate he was going to be admiral by the time the comet came, and Zuko was just… going to have to avoid an entire swath of ocean, to stop his ship from being commandeered, or something. 

 

"Congratulations on the promotion, Commander," Uncle said, so Zuko didn't have to. Behind them, Lieutenant Jee quietly used their sacrifice to sneak off towards the coinmaster's office. He'd long ago perfected the art of using his princes as human shields. Zuko… couldn't blame him.

 

"You're back from the South Pole early." Zhao's smile was like an eel-shark's. "Find the Avatar?"

 

"I  _ will  _ find him." Zuko took in a measured breath, and let it out. "What do you  _ want,  _ Captain?"

 

"Commander," he corrected, with a narrowing of his eyes over his unwavering smile. "I wished to apologize in person for the shortages on your way south, Prince Zuko. Supply line troubles; you understand. Only  _ priority missions _ can be given preferential treatment."

 

"Finding the Avatar  _ is _ a priority mission," Zuko snapped. "And I have a lead—"

 

Zhao smirked the  _ exact same smirk  _ he'd used the last time Zuko had shouted 'I have a lead'. And the last-last time. And the time before that. "And what is it this time, my Prince?"

 

"I found an air—" 

 

"Nephew," Uncle interrupted, with a friendly chuckle, "let us not bore the new Commander with the scrolls we found on our Air Temple expedition."

 

Zuko shut his mouth over  _ found an airbender _ and realized he couldn't say that, even if it was the best lead ever, even if he was getting  _ so close _ to finding the Avatar and he wanted to rub it into this smug weasel-rat's face. Because Aan—the  _ monk _ wasn't a scroll or a dusty relic or a spirit-cursed object, he was a person, and hadn't Zuko  _ just  _ told the kid and the waterbender to stay down in their cells so they  _ wouldn't  _ attract attention? 

 

"You're right, Uncle," Zuko ground out. "Excuse us,  _ Commander. _ We have a lot to do if we want to make the next tide."

 

He took a step to go around. Zhao took a step to block him. And another, until they were nearly toe-to-toe. "Oh, you wouldn't be boring me at all. I'm a dabbler in spirit research, myself. Perhaps we could discuss your future plans, and your  _ options.  _ Join me for tea?"

 

Zhao's face was  _ right there,  _ and all Zuko wanted to do was take a few steps back and scrub the wet-warm feeling of  _ Zhao-breath _ off his  _ face _ but if he gave the man an inch he'd look weak and it would just be worse next time—

 

"Wow, you're creepy," a dock dock guard said. A short, scrawny dock guard wearing ill-fitting armor with the  _ Wani's  _ seal on its shoulder plate even though he was  _ not _ one of Zuko's crew. Zuko couldn't see who he was behind his helmet, but he had a feeling he knew anyway. "Like,  _ don't follow the strange shadow into the tundra _ creepy. Do you practice, or is this just a natural talent?"

 

Zhao took a step back, to better see his new target. Zuko did  _ not  _ let his shoulders sag in relief.

 

"...I see they've lowered the age of enlistment. Or are you filling the dearth in your ranks with colony brats, Prince Zuko?"

 

"Who are you calling a colony brat?" the false guard puffed out his chest. "I'm a warrior! A W— Fire Nation warrior! Fire and imperialism, rawr!" 

 

Zhao's face was the fine line between perplexed and apoplexed. Zuko stepped between them, knocking the fake guard back towards the boarding ramp with his shoulder as he angled his body towards Zhao's.

 

"Unfortunately, Commander, I will have to decline your generous offer. I must discipline my crewman."

 

"Do so," Zhao said. 

 

Zuko and Iroh and the fake guard turned their heads, watching him leave. Zuko let himself take two calming breaths after that. Then he spun around, and ordered  _ very reasonably,  _ "Take off the helmet, Other One."

 

The Water Tribe boy did. He then proceeded to hold said helmet up, and point at it, apparently for Zuko's benefit. "These things have  _ terrible  _ peripheral vision. Just a really bad design. I thought the Fire Nation was supposed to be  _ advanced _ with its engineering. And what's with the skull motif? Are you guys not even pretending to  _ yourselves  _ that you're the goodies?" 

 

Zuko took in another breath, and did not roast the boy alive inside his well-insulated armor. "Why," he growled. It was the only word he could get out, but the teen seemed to understand.

 

"After you went rage-stomping off to sulk,  _ I _ went to find swords to practice with. You should really lock your armory."

 

...Zuko was going to have  _ another _ talk with his quartermaster. And remove the supply closet keys from the man's control.  _ "Why." _

 

Again, the boy understood. "Just testing how easy it would be to infiltrate your fleet. Pretty easy."

 

"Go back to your cell, peasant."

 

"Sure, I'll get right on that. But first: correct me if I'm wrong, but was or was that man not  _ the creepiest ever.  _ With the leaning into your personal space and the  _ breathing on you  _ and the would-you-like-to-drink-of-my-probably-drugged-tea."

 

Zuko knew he shouldn't, in no way should he be distracted or in any way encourage this behavior, but his hands were already gesturing before he could stop himself.  _ "Yes.  _ Uncle always says I'm imagining it!"

 

"You are  _ not  _ imagining it."

 

_ "Thank you." _

 

Uncle stroked his beard. "I did not say you were imagining it, only that the lotus bloom rises above murky waters."

 

"What does that  _ mean,"  _ the Water Tribe boy said, "and why would you want your nephew's lotus bloom  _ touched by murky waters." _

 

Zuko gesticulated in an  _ extremely vindicated manner, _ before he remembered he should be angry about this.  _ "Get back on the ship! And take off that armor!" _

 

"Yes sir, Commander Prince Zuko Sir," the sleep-deprived teen saluted. "I will definitely do that and nothing else."

 

%%%

 

Lieutenant Jee arrived at the coinmaster's office. The coinmaster looked up as he entered, looked down at the  _ Wani's _ crest on his shoulder, and proceeded to put an  _ Out to Lunch _ sign on his desk. 

 

"Sorry," the man said, "we just closed."

 

"You're going out to lunch?" Jee asked. Not pointing out that most people, at this degree of the sun, had only just finished breakfast. The man looked down at his own sign, as if to confirm that neither he nor Jee were illiterate. "Let me come with; I don't know the good places around here."

 

"Sir— " the man began to decline.

 

"On me," Jee said. "After all, it's payday."

 

Or it would be, as soon as he could talk this man around to releasing the crew's wages. Lunch, Jee had found, generally helped where a shouting teenager did not. The  _ Wani's _ resupplying party was a highly specialized team.

 

%%%

 

"Do you think they ever found Sokka?" Aang asked, his legs propped up on the wall and his back on the pillow pile. 

 

"Honestly? I'm not sure they even looked," Katara said, in much the same position, but with a catopus sprawled purring on her stomach. 

 

Prison was boring, even when you had the key.  

 

%%%

 

Sokka was entirely unclear on whether the crew didn't notice him under his newly replaced guard helmet, or just didn't care.

 

"We're going drinking, Ensign Other One," Hawker Genji said, thoroughly answering the question above. "You coming?"

 

"You want a Water Tribe warrior imitating a Fire Nation solider to accompany you on an ill-supervised, well-libated excursion into an enemy port," Sokka summarized. "A port he may or may not be actively thinking of ways to sabotage?"

 

"Aren't we all?" Engineer Hanako said.

 

Which pretty much sold him on going drinking with the evil people, yes.

 

%%%

 

Iroh cornered the supply officer with good cheer and a ruthlessly effective memory. "Ah, Sargeant Yuuki! How is your wife?"

 

"She's well, General, thank you for— Excuse me, you can't— Commander Zhao has ordered a hold on supply distribution while we conduct inventory—"

 

Crewman Teruko and Assistant Cook Dekku blithely ignored the man, and began loading bags onto the cart they'd appropriated. Pikesman Kazuto looked somewhat more nervous, but followed his senior crewmen's lead.

 

"And your daughter? She is four now, correct?"

 

"Her birthday was last—  _ Put that back!" _

 

The  _ Wani  _ was, on paper, allotted the usual food supplies for a ship of its class. In practice, there were always  _ shortages _ and  _ inventory check lockdowns _ and  _ supplies urgently needed elsewhere, yes all of them. _

 

Fortunately, those assigned to the  _ Wani _ were already naturally inclined to disrespecting such inconveniences as 'authority.'

 

"If I'm not mistaken, she'll be throwing her first sparks soon!" Iroh chuckled, keeping his considerable good will positioned between the supply officer and the rapidly working crewmen.

 

"Yeah, she—  _ We only have one of those, you  _ actually  _ can't take that one!"  _

 

They had gotten very efficient, in two and a half years. 

 

%%%

 

"So I don't actually have any money," Sokka said, sometime after the  _ Wani's _ crew had sat him down at the table but before Helmsman Kyo had come back with their drinks.

 

"Darling," Hawker Genji said, clapping his armor on the back. "If you're paying for drinks, you're doing it wrong."

 

"Uh," Sokka said, suddenly a little alarmed by the course this night might take. "I'm flattered, but—"

 

"And I'm spoken for," Genji grinned. "Also: not what I was talking about. Observe." He grabbed Sokka's shoulders, and turned him around. The one they were observing was the Helmsman. 

 

"Kyo's got kind of this  _ easy-to-eat-alive _ air about him," Assistant-to-the-Doctor and Occasional Pikeswoman Satomi confided. "We always send him up to break the ice."

 

Sokka had seen shark-wolves closing in on bleeding prey. This looked a lot like that. The red-dressed soldiers around the Helmsman were laughing, but Sokka wouldn't describe it as  _ with _ him. And they were showing a lot of teeth, but he wouldn't describe it as  _ smiling. _

 

"Uh, no?" Kyo was replying. "We didn't find the Avatar, just a bunch of Water Tribe savages. We converted a few to Agni's light, I think. It's a bit of a work in progress. Oh, and we caught an airbender! And his bison. The bison eats  _ a lot.  _ Which I guess makes sense considering its size, and the flying. You would think the original airbenders would be more inherently aerodynamic—"

 

"...What," one of the shark-wolves replied.

 

"Did… did he just sell us out?" Sokka asked. "For free drinks?"

 

"We're not selling anybody out," Genji sagely replied, "if no one ever believes us."

 

"It's a really long story," Kyo was saying, "and my crew is waiting. Could you guys help me get this round ordered?"

 

"Bless that man and his inherently wholesome air," Satomi said, sculpting the Flame of Agni over her heart. "They always fall for it."

 

Sokka suddenly understood why the crew had pushed together  _ way more tables _ than their small party needed. They were expecting new friends. Friends with wallets.

 

%%%

 

"Don't have any in medium," the quartermaster said, his feet on the counter. 

 

"Do you have  _ any  _ size of uniforms," Zuko asked, through gritted teeth. 

 

"Don't know. Might have to jog my memory, sir."

 

"...Do you have smalls."

 

"Nope."

 

"Larges."

 

"Can't say as we do."

 

"Do you have  _ spare uniform fabric." _

 

"Does this  _ look  _ like a fabric shop, Your Highness?"

 

Zuko breathed in through his nose and out through his mouth, and did not leave immediately and just come back with a mask on tonight, because then Zhao would know what had happened to those coats on their way south. 

 

"If you don't have any uniforms," Zuko said, "then  _ what is on those shelves behind you?" _

 

The man didn't turn around. "Out of season inventory, sir."

 

Zuko took in another deep breath. This one was less about temper control, and more about lung capacity preparation. He'd tried to be nice. Uncle always said to try being nice  _ first.  _ He got  _ a lot of practice at being nice,  _ and it didn't work any better now than it had at his first port when he was thirteen and just tall enough to try smiling over the counter. 

 

Obligatory niceness out of the way, Zuko moved on to more effective methods.

 

%%%

 

The rest of the bar looked up at the sudden volume increase from outside. The crew didn't. What they  _ did _ do was wordlessly click their glasses together, and down their current drinks in one go.

 

"Bottom's up, Other One," Genji nudged him. "Ship rule: if you can hear the Prince shouting from across port, you have to drink."

 

Sokka drank. He was learning a lot of rules, like  _ 'you're not a Fire Nation citizen so I can't see how our drinking age applies to you' _ and  _ 'yeah, Prince Zuko definitely knows we do this, don't worry about it. Not even worth mentioning to him, really.' _ All these rule-things were getting a little wobbly in his head-place. All sloshied-up, like they might leak out his ears if he tipped too far over. He made sure to steady himself by leaning against Genji's side. Not Hanako's. He had learned that lesson.

 

"You're all a bunch of liars," one of their Free Drink Providers said. His voice said  _ gruff and unimpressed,  _ but the way he leaned over the table said  _ tell me more.  _ "No way a single part of that is true—"

 

"Didn't see the pillar of light myself." Engineer Hanako was smaller than Sokka, drinking more than Sokka, and sounding so lucid she  _ had _ to be cheating. He tested this theory by sipping from her cup while she was distracted, and got his first taste of  _ fire whiskey burning down his throat cough-wheeze-dying-now.  _ She snagged her cup back from his hand without even looking. "But the airbender is a damned smiling nuisance, and the Water Tribe idiot is afraid of cats."

 

"I am not!" Sokka protested, over his wheezing. "I'm afraid of  _ extradimensional beings prying at the cracks in our reality with appendages untold!  _ Have you tried to count all of that thing's legs? Have you?  _ Does not the number change?" _

 

The table was staring at him. It was a collective kind of stare. Genji slung an arm over his shoulder. "Oh, didn't we mention? Here's one of those savages, right here."

 

There were suddenly a lot of people taking in his dark skin and blue eyes. These things had existed all evening, but gotten only cursory glances until now. 

 

"Your nation is awful and so are all of you," Sokka said authoritatively. "And that thing is  _ not _ a cat."

 

"No way," another soldier said. "I'm not buying it. You styled up a halfbreed's hair to get a few laughs. I've  _ heard  _ of the things your crew does to get free drinks."

 

_ "Do you find my hair laughable?"  _ This seemed very important. So did standing up and trying to loom over the guy. This was hindered both by his own lack of relative height and the way the floor kept trying to be the ceiling. Or a wall. Or just kind of… roll-y. 

 

Genji grabbed his arm, and tugged him down into his seat. "They doubt your authenticity, Water Tribe. Why don't you regal them with tales of your native icy wasteland."

 

The drinks kept coming. The two-fish-hooks story was a big hit. And absolutely no one believed he was actually Water Tribe  _ (it's not a topknot it's a WARRIOR'S WOLFTAIL), _ or that there was a bison on their ship  _ (of course you can't see it it's in the hold!),  _ or that an airbender had appeared from a beam of light  _ (actually he was frozen for a hundred years in an iceberg. With the light trapped inside, I guess?) _

 

Engineer Hanako started intercepting his drinks. Sokka was thoroughly incensed about this, until he realized pear-mango juice existed and was delicious, and these stupid Fire Nation soldiers were just making themselves weaker targets by enjoying their stupid throat-burny liqour instead of this divine nectur of the unalcoholic spirits. 

 

%%%

 

Zuko moved on to the stables, to secure a new bridle for Melon Dango and enough hay for four komodo rhinos and an actual flying bison. 

 

He was  _ nice.  _ Then he wasn't.

 

It didn't change the fact that his ship wasn't scheduled to pick up that much hay, and the price for extra was apparently  _ slightly inflated due to shipping costs, so very sorry your Highness—  _

 

He applied more volume to the problem, just to see if it would help.

 

%%%

 

The coinmaster, and the majority of the restaurant's patrons, jerked their heads towards the sound of the teenage fire alarm going off. Jee reached for his drink, and downed it in one go. 

 

"What is that?" the coinmaster asked.

 

"That," Jee said, picking back up his bowl of noodles, "is what's going to visit your office after lunch, if I'm not back with the crew salaries and ship stipend."

 

They only drew wages quarterly, for reasons of  _ not dealing with this on a monthly basis.  _ The coinmaster hadn't had the pleasure of Zuko's acquaintance on their way south. Jee noisily drank his broth, and set the bowl down. 

 

"Listen," he said, leaning back in his chair. "I know you have orders to hassle us, and I have orders to hassle you, so how about we both just leave the fire-measuring contests to our commanders. You can tell Zhao you gave us the run-around for hours; I'll tell my commander I put the fear of Agni into you. Meanwhile," Jee turned his head towards the nearest waiter, and lifted a hand. "Two fire whiskies, and another plate of those dumplings."

 

They toasted their deal, and enjoyed their three-course lunch. Jee got a receipt on their way out; he'd be billing this as a work expense. Such things were a line-item deduction in the  _ Wani's _ regular budget.

 

%%%

 

"Money problems, Prince Zuko?" Zhao asked. Zhao asked while pushing himself off the wall of the building, where he had clearly been waiting for Zuko to exit,  _ how did he keep getting promoted if he never did real work? _

 

(The secret lay in proper delegation. Zuko would have had trouble fathoming this concept, even if it were diagramed for him.)

 

"Commander Zhao," Zuko said with a curt nod, in lieu of a real answer. The man liked the sound of his own name better than any other reply, anyway. "Excuse me. I'm going back to my ship."

 

"I'll accompany you. As I said, we have…  _ options _ to discuss."

 

Zuko's armor hid the shudder along his spine. It was the number one reason he still wore it in friendly ports.

 

%%%

 

"Not that way," his best friend Hawker Genji said, steering Sokka right. Left? Reft? Lefight? The street kept changing its dimensional orientation, as such things did when the veil on reality grew thin. 

 

"But I like that way," Sokka said, pulling or maybe pushing back. "That way has stylish hair. S'almost as good as mine, except more stupid. Hi, Commander Prince—!" 

 

A hand parked itself over his mouth. "Let's  _ not _ get the nice Prince's attention, okay? Keep walking. Eyes straight.  _ This _ street, not that one."

 

Straight was  _ so many directions,  _ and Sokka made sure to look boldly into the spinning truth of each of them. "But Commander Creepy is with him," Sokka said, as loudly and clearly as one could say through another man's hand. He also pointed behind them, for clarification. Genji tugged his arm back down to his side. 

 

"Let's not point at the nice fleet commander, either. We are just going to walk back to the ship, put some more water in you, and tomorrow we'll pretend that you're sick instead of hungover and none of us will ever admit to this. Doesn't that sound like fun?" 

 

_ "It must be hard, being such a burden to your uncle," _ Zhao's voice oozed up the street. 

 

"But he's  _ creepy,"  _ Sokka muffle-spoke, pointing with his other hand. Because Genji had a hand over his mouth and one over his arm, but was a mere mortal with only two such limbs, so that left Sokka still pointing-capable. "Why are we leaving Zuko alone with the creepy?"

 

"He has a point," Helmsman Kyo said. 

 

"Is this  _ really _ worth getting yelled at by both of them?" the short, inexplicably sober engineer said. "We go back to the ship, we find the General—" 

 

_ "Perhaps a loan, my Prince? You will find the terms of repayment quite… agreeable." _

 

A collective slump went through the group. 

 

"So," Kyo said. "Fake fight?"

 

"Fake?" Assistant-to-the-Doctor and Occasional Pikeswoman Satomi grinned. "Genji cheated at cards last night."

 

"I  _ always _ cheat at cards," Genji said, like this was a defense. He held Sokka between him and the woman, as a slightly more effective measure. 

 

"Yeah. But it really took the fun out of my four-pair of aces when  _ you had them too." _

 

"I am unclear on whether this is  _ fake—"  _ Genji backpedaled, dragging his Sokka-shield with him. Which was the point where punches started getting enthusiastically thrown his way. Kyo and Hanako cheered them on.

 

Sokka was still in the middle, but being short and mostly drunk weight proved to be an asset.

 

%%%

 

A fight tumbled out from the adjacent street. Four of his crewman and a drunk Water Tribe idiot dressed as a fifth. 

 

Zuko had never been so glad to see a headache coming. He took an overly large step away from Zhao, and a deep breath, and let an entire day of frustration vent.

 

%%%

 

At various points around the port, other crewmen on shore leave drank.

 

%%%

 

"Put him in the brig," Zuko ordered, when they'd returned to the ship.

 

"I will definitely stay where I am put," the drunk teenager said, as he was carried by two other crewmen and  _ still  _ managed to almost fall sideways. 

 

"The  _ rest of you,"  _ Zuko said, having adopted a policy of Ignoring the Other One, "I will deal with  _ later." _

 

Later, when he had time to sit down with Lieutenant Jee and figure out the worst possible duty rosters to shift them to. They'd taken his prisoner into port. They'd taken his prisoner into port while he was  _ impersonating a crewmen.  _ They'd taken his crewman-impersonating-prisoner into port, told anyone who would listen that he was a Water Tribesman, no doubt mentioned the water and airbender while they were at it, probably the bison too, and don't forget that he'd thought he'd had the Avatar  _ again _ and been wrong  _ again.  _ And. And they'd  _ gotten the Water-Tribesman-impersonating-a-crew-member drunker than they'd ever offered to get him.  _ Even that one time when he was thirteen and Teruko had smuggled that fire whiskey on board and they'd bought his silence with a cup of his own (which, he'd realized when he was fourteen and snuck off to a bar on his own, they'd had the audacity to  _ water down)—   _

 

"Later," Zuko repeated. 

 

"Told you it wouldn't be worth it," he caught Hanako muttering as they went up the boarding ramp. Which was  _ good,  _ maybe they'd think before they made embarrassments out of themselves next time. 

 

That left him with Lieutenant Jee, and Uncle, and the day's real business. The resupplying party met up again at the dock, as Teruko and Kazuto loaded sacks into the hold.

 

"Report," Zuko said. 

 

"The  _ Wani  _ is fully restocked in non-perishables," Uncle said, tracking the drunken tribesman with his eyes as he almost-but-not-quite managed to pitch himself and Kyo into the water. "They had a  _ tragic case  _ of cabbage-slugs, though. I did not know cabbage-slugs were omnivorous! They have infested all fresh food and meats, and the supply officer could not in good conscience allow them to spread to another port."

 

"Crew salaries in full," Lieutenant Jee said, firmly ignoring the crew's disciplinary issues until such a time as something was bleeding, on fire, or an active danger to the ship. "We got shorted on the ship maintenance stipend; our decommissioning exemption 'didn't transfer.' Crewman Teruko's wages will make up most of the difference, but not enough for the refit of those engine panels Engineer Hanako's been asking for. Not at  _ Zhao's _ port."

 

The two adults looked at him. Zuko squared his shoulders, and refrained from grimacing. 

 

"I got proper clothes for the stupid peasants, and enough new uniforms to deal with usual wear and tear. ...New-ish. And Melon Dango's bridle." Zuko said. "We… are not currently allocated a new shipment of hay. But I'll make it work. I just need to—to look at the books again, I know we have the money." 

 

"Our most pressing need is the food for our two-legged crewmembers, then," Uncle said, clearly hiding his  _ own  _ grimace. "My apologies, Prince Zuko."

 

"It's not your fault," Zuko reminded him, pushing Zhao and his  _ it-must-be-hard-to-be-such-a-burden-to-your-Uncle  _ out of his mind. Uncle wasn't even technically part of the crew, he didn't need to be here or be helping, and it was Zuko's responsibility to keep his ship running, not Uncle's. "I'll make it work," he repeated. Because he always did. 

 

%%%

 

"Hi, Sokka," Aang waved, still sitting upside down.

 

"Are you drunk?" Katara said, holding water in a steady circle between her hands, broken only by catopus paws batting lazily up at it. 

 

"I am not not sober," Sokka said, then counted on his fingers and added an additional: "...Not. So anyway, I'm going to go exploring because Zuko told me not to and also because there's an abomination in your lap and I'd rather not be in the same plane of existence as it but I'm drawing a hard line at the same room, who wants to come?" 

 

"I do!" Aang said. 

 

"Aang, we promised Zuko we'd stay down here until he tells us it's safe."

 

"We didn't  _ actually _ promise that," Aang pointed out.

 

"It was implied, Aang."

 

Sokka wandered off somewhere during the lecture on promises and the-spirit-of-the-aforementioned that followed. So did Sushi. 

 

He left via the door. She left via the dark gaps in the ceiling's pipework. 

 

%%%

 

Pikesman Kazuto, aka the New Guy, had left the ship for less than two hours and now the young Water Tribe warrior was wearing Fire Navy armor. And… nobody was saying anything, they were just letting him wander around the ship  _ dressed like one of them.  _ Hadn't he been making technical diagrams of their systems for a week? Wasn't this a  _ problem? _ Nevermind that the teenager looked exactly like a younger version of—

 

(Of the night Kazuto lost his last crew. The man with the ice-blue eyes and blood on his wolf helm—)

 

Watching the tribesman was Teruko's job. Kazuto knew that. But it felt like  _ she _ didn't. And he hadn't been given any orders after they'd finished loading the new food on,  _ 'go relax, you're up for shore leave next'  _ wasn't an order. If he was free now, then he was free to follow the warrior. See what he was planning.

 

...Watch as he bumped into every wall, making the halls seem a lot more cramped than they actually were. Was the teen… drunk? Had they taken him  _ drinking?  _

 

(No one had taken Kazuto drinking. That shy Helmsman had asked, but Kazuto had already promised to help Crewman Teruko with the food supplies.)

 

The Water Tribe teenager paused in the middle of the hallway. Looked up. Kazuto followed his gaze.

 

_ Toxic green eyes, unblinking in the darkness _

 

_ Blood-crusted fur _

 

_ The chitter-scrape of claws on steel _

 

_ Then silence, and silence alone, echoing where something now appeared to have never been _

 

"Did you see that?" the teenager demanded. "You saw that, didn't you?  _ Didn't you?" _

 

"...Teruko said I shouldn't see anything when the crew has shore leave," Kazuto said, gripping his spear. He wasn't pointing it at the Water Tribesman. 

 

%%%

 

Zuko went over the ship's savings. Again. It got a little easier to cross things out every time. Like… he didn't need a new armor set. He wasn't growing as fast as last year, and it was stupid to buy armor every year anyway. And he probably wouldn't need to fight the Avatar before their next annual budget. Probably. 

 

Now how much feed would that buy them, when he had an actual flying bison on board?

 

...Not much, at this port. How much did they  _ need _ to buy, to make it to the next port? (Did he expect the prices to be any better there?) 

 

Zuko went over the ship's savings. Again.

 

Behind him, the door to his room opened without anyone first knocking or otherwise bothering to announce their presence. 

 

"Uncle, when did you put  _ board games _ into the budget—" 

 

"I am not your Uncle," Other One said, "though I wouldn't rule out the possibility entirely. There's probably some alternate universe where I  _ am _ your uncle. Or your dad. Or your  _ uncdad—"  _

 

Zuko pinched the bridge of his nose. Very carefully, he re-added  _ door lock repairs  _ to the budget. 

 

"Is there something I can do for you, Other One? Maybe  _ help divest you of your armor?" _

 

"Naw, I'm good," the still-drunk teenager waved him off. "But I can't help but notice that  _ you _ want supplies, and  _ I  _ want to flee this ship of my foreshadowed death."

 

Zuko had stopped pinching his nose. That was a mistake. "What are you getting at, Other One?" 

 

"If this Zhao guy is such a problem, why go through him at all? We have a  _ flying bison. _ If the port stores are being stupid, go further inland." __

 

He could… do that?

 

He had an actual flying bison. He could do that.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did anyone else find Zhao's way-too-close body language and would-you-like-my-tea-little-boy smile really damn creepy in his first introduction scene? Like. Inappropriately creepy. And that's not even mentioning his obsessive rivalry with a minor. Zhao, man. Zhao what are you doing, man. There is no way Zuko does not feel personal-space-(and-possibly-other-kinds-of)-violated after at least two and a half years of that behavior. 
> 
> Sokka sees you, buddy. Sokka validates your feelings, and has your back.
> 
> PS: [Tumblr](https://muffinlance.tumblr.com)! Check out the growing collection of fanart. You won't be disappointed. There is Sushi. And guard!Zuko. And turtleducks biting our young Fire Lord's nose, because what is Zuko's life but a turtleduck to the face.

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr](https://muffinlance.tumblr.com) || [More Stories](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MuffinLance/pseuds/MuffinLance/works) || [Profile/Update Schedule](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MuffinLance/profile)
> 
> [TV Tropes: Cheating at Pai Sho](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/FanFic/CheatingAtPaiSho)


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